Session Description: Introduction to Africa-Related Archives at Stanford

This presentation offers an accessible introduction to the Hoover Institution’s Africa-related archival holdings and to practical strategies for incorporating those materials into research, teaching, and public programs. Issayas & Bertrands will lead an overview of the collections, describing representative formats and thematic strengths, such as political, social, and cultural records from across the continent—and demonstrating search and access pathways for scholars and community researchers. The session will also address best practices for citing archival materials, navigating permissions, and requesting scans or reproductions. 

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Speaker's biography:

Issayas Tesfamariam holds a PhD in Political Economy, an MA in Asia Pacific Studies, and a BA in Radio, Television, Video, and Film. He teaches Amharic and Tigrinya at Stanford University and serves as a logistics coordinator at the Hoover Institution Library & Archives, where he supports archival access, description, and preservation. 

Bertrand Patenaude is a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, where he is currently serving as Interim Head of Engagement at the Library & Archives. He is also a Lecturer for the International Relations Program at Stanford. His first book, The Big Show in Bololand: The American Relief Expedition to Soviet Russia in the Famine of 1921 (Stanford University Press, 2002), won the 2003 Marshall Shulman Book Prize and was made into a documentary film for the award-winning PBS history series American Experience. His 2009 book, Trotsky: Downfall of a Revolutionary (Harper), was serialized on BBC Radio. His most recent book, co-authored with Joan Nabseth Stevenson, is Bread + Medicine: American Famine Relief in Soviet Russia, 1921–1923 (Hoover Institution Press, 2023). Patenaude was educated at Boston College (BA, 1977) and at the University of Vienna, was a Fulbright Scholar in Moscow in 1982–83, and received his PhD in History from Stanford in 1987. He has contributed book reviews to the Wall Street Journal since 2004.