Welcome!

My name is Salih, pronounced like “Sa-Lee-H.”  I am a Collegiate Assistant Professor in The College and a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts at The University of Chicago. I am also a faculty affiliate with the Departments of Political Science and Sociology, as well as the Center for International Social Science Research (CISSR).

I am broadly interested in comparative political and social change, colonial legacies, and institutions, with a particular focus on political regimes, postcolonial development, and institutional change in Africa. My book project examines the legacies of twentieth-century liberation struggles against settler-colonial domination in Southern Africa. You can find more details about my book project here and my research here. I ask what explains the varied long-term legacies of historic twentieth-century liberation struggles against settler-colonial and white-minority domination in Southern Africa. I submitted my dissertation on this subject in August 2023, and you can see the dissertation’s preview in ProQuest, including the preface and extended abstract, here. My research has been recognized and generously supported by competitive grants and fellowships from the Society of Fellows and the Center for International Social Science Research (CISSR) at The University of Chicago, the Roberta Buffett Institute for Global Affairs at Northwestern University, APSA and the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Harry Frank Guggenheim (HFG) Foundation, the U.S. Bureau of Education, and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC).

I received my Ph.D. in political science from Northwestern University in 2023, with a graduate certificate in Comparative-Historical Social Sciences. Previously, I earned an M.A. in Political Science from Osnabrück University (Germany), and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Asmara in Eritrea, where I grew up. Besides extensive traveling for research in Africa, I have lived in several countries across three continents, ranging from very poor and authoritarian (Eritrea) to affluent social democracies (Germany and Sweden) to a highly unequal free-market plutocracy (United States).

December 2025, Chicago