Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Faculty Development, and Strategic Implementation
Jack and Margaret Sweet
Endowed Professor, History
Nwando Achebe (pronounced: Wan-do Ah-chě-bě; [pronunciation key: ě as in pet]), the Jack and Margaret Sweet Endowed Professor of History, and Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Faculty Development, and Strategic Implementation, is a multi- award-winning historian and teacher at Michigan State University. She is also the founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of West African History and an American Council on Education (ACE) 2023-24 Fellow.
Achebe is the author of six books. Her first book, Farmers, Traders, Warriors, and Kings: Female Power and Authority in Northern Igboland, 1900-1960 was published by Heinemann. Achebe’s second book, The Female King of Colonial Nigeria: Ahebi Ugbabe (Indiana University Press, 2011), winner of three book awards—The Aidoo-Snyder Book Award, The Barbara “Penny” Kanner Book Award, and The Gita Chaudhuri Book Award—is a full length critical biography on the only femalewarrant chief and king in colonial British Africa. The writing was funded by a generous grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. Dr. Achebe is co-author of the 2018 History of West Africa E-Course Book . She is also co-editor, with William Worger and Charles Ambler of A Companion to African History (2019), co-editor with Claire Robertson of Holding the World Together: African Women in Changing Perspective (Wisconsin University Press, 2019); and sole-author of Female Monarchs and Merchant Queens in Africa (Ohio University Press, 2020).
In addition to the Wenner-Gren, Dr. Achebe has received a number of other prestigious grants including awards from Rockefeller Foundation, Woodrow Wilson, Fulbright-Hays, Ford Foundation, the World Health Organization, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
If you would like to contact Dr. Achebe, please contact her assistant, Victoria Pierce at malkow14@msu.edu or 432-3321.