Michael Lambert

 is Associate Professor of African Studies and Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and an enrolled citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. His research has focused on francophone West Africa and, in particular, the West African nation of Senegal. He lived for more than five years in Senegal and the neighboring nation of Mauritania, where he served as a Peace Corps volunteer. Hos first book, Longing for Exile: Migration and the Making of a Translocal Community in Senegal (West Africa) (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2002), is a historical ethnography of a Senegalese community. He has also published on gender, negritude, transnational migration, and West African politics.