Souleymane Bachir Diagne is Director of the Institute of African Studies and Professor of French and Philosophy at Columbia University. He received his academic training in France. An alumnus of the École Normale Supérieure, he holds an agrégation in Philosophy (1978) and he took his Doctorat d’État in philosophy at the University of Paris Sorbonne (1988) where he also took his BA (1977). Before joining Columbia University in 2008 he taught philosophy for twenty years at Cheikh Anta Diop University, Dakar (Senegal), then eight years at Northwestern University in Chicago. His field of research includes history of logic, history of philosophy, Islamic philosophy, African philosophy and literature. He is the author of several books in the fields of the history of algebraic logic, philosophy, particularly in the Islamic world and in Africa. Professor Diagne’s book L’élan vital dans la pensée de Senghor et de Mohamed Iqbal was awarded the Dagnan-Bouveret prize by the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences for 2011 and on that same year he received the Edouard Glissant Prize for his work. He is an associate member of the Royal Academy of Belgium and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
