Professor Anne Pitcher (DAAS and Political Science) has been elected as the incoming Vice President of the African Studies Association (ASA), the world's most eminent and established organization focused on Africanist scholarship. This is a three year commitment, for which  Professor Pitcher will serve one year as the ASA Vice President, one year as President, and one year as Past President. 

Professor Pitcher, who also serves as coordinator of the African Study Center's African Social Research Initiative (ASRI), is an expert on the politics of Lusophone Africa and southern Africa. She is the author of several award-winning books, including Politics in the Portuguese Empire (Oxford, 1993), Transforming Mozambique: The Politics of Privatization, 1975-2000 (Cambridge, 2003), and most recently Party Politics and Economic Reform in Africa's Democracies (Cambridge, 2012).