Omar Ali

Omar H. Ali serves as the Elizabeth Rosenthal Excellence Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, with a joint appointment in the Department of History and African American and African Diaspora Studies Program (AADS). Having served as Dean of Lloyd International Honors College from 2015 to 2025, he is the author or editor of nine books, including In the Balance of Power: Independent Black Politics and Third-Party Movements in the United States (Ohio University Press) and Malik Ambar: Power and Slavery across the Indian Ocean (Oxford University Press).

A historian of the global African Diaspora who explores the political, cultural, and scientific contributions and innovations of Africans and people of African descent, he has been a Fulbright Scholar at Universidad Nacional de Colombia, a Visiting Professor at Vanderbilt University, a Research Associate of the Medicinal Chemistry Collaborative in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UNCG, and a Library Scholar at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University. A graduate of the London School of Economics and Political Science, he studied ethnography at the School of Oriental and African Studies before receiving his Ph.D. in History from Columbia University.

Among his academic and teaching awards, in 2016 he was selected as The Carnegie Foundation North Carolina Professor of the Year and in 2021 he was named Knight in the Order of the Academic Palms (Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques) by the French government for his work with educators around the world.

As a dean at UNCG he worked with faculty from across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, providing strategic direction and operational leadership to the Aubry Paul and Georgia Garrison Lloyd Honors College, the Distinguished Visiting Scholars, Research Fellows, and Artist-in-Residence programs, the university’s four Residential Colleges (Ashby, Strong, North Spencer, and South Spencer, with living-learning themes in law, medicine, art, and social and environmental sustainability), and the Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, and Creativity Office, serving over 14,000 students.

Appearing on CNN, NPR, and PBS for his research, commentary and analysis, Dr. Ali’s work has also been featured by UNESCO, the New York Public Library, TEDx, and the National Humanities Center.

Education

Ph.D., Columbia University, New York, 2003
B.Sc., London School of Economics and Political Science, 1992

Courses Taught

Ali teaches courses in African American and African Diaspora Studies; History; Geography, Environment, and Sustainability; and International and Global Studies

Research

Africa in World History; Black Populism in the New South; Independent Black Politics and the Law; Maroons and Resistance to slavery in Colonial Latin America; Islam in the Indian Ocean world; Africans in the Global History of Science.