Christopher Tounsel

Christopher Tounsel serves as Associate Professor of History at the University of Washington and Chair of the African Studies Program, a position he was selected for in June 2023 after serving as Interim Chair during 2022-2023. He also directs the African Studies Program and serves as Director of Graduate Studies within the Department of History. He is an Executive Board Member of the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities and an affiliate faculty member of the Comparative Religion Program.

Dr. Tounsel earned his B.A. in History from Duke University (2009), followed by an M.A. (2012) and Ph.D. (2015) in History from the University of Michigan. His academic journey includes significant fieldwork in South Sudan during its first year of independence in 2012, where he participated in an archival organizing project at the South Sudan National Archive in Juba.

Tounsel specializes as a historian of modern Sudan with particular expertise in how race and religion function as political technologies. His research spans multiple interdisciplinary fields including African Studies, Comparative Colonialisms, and Comparative Ethnicity and Nationalism. He has developed specialized graduate study areas focusing on North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa during colonial and postcolonial eras, with attention to social, political, religious, and economic subjects including slavery and abolition, the Scramble for Africa, resistance and nationalism, Pan-Africanism, and Christianity and Islam. His work demonstrates how religious frameworks have shaped political imagination in Sudanese contexts, particularly examining how Southern Sudanese intellectuals used Judeo-Christian Scriptures to frame revolutionary work against the Sudanese state.

His publication record reveals consistent scholarly output with a focus on Sudanese political history, religious dynamics, and African American-Sudanese connections. Recent works examine divestment movements, religious nationalism, and the historical relationship between African Americans and Sudan. His research demonstrates sophisticated interdisciplinary approaches that bridge religious studies, political science, and historical analysis.

• Honorable Mention, 2025 International Studies Association Book Award (Diplomatic Studies Section) for Bounds of Blackness
• Finalist, 2022 Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD) First Book Award for Chosen Peoples
• Finalist, 2022 Christianity Today Book Award (History/Biography) for Chosen Peoples
• 2019 Career Enhancement Fellow, Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation

Professor Tounsel has secured research funding from prestigious organizations including the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation (now Institute for Citizens & Scholars), Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Council of Overseas American Research Centers. He serves on the African Studies Association's Bethwell A. Ogot Book Prize committee and as an associate editor for Global Black Thought. His expertise is frequently sought by major media outlets including BBC, Al Jazeera, Human Rights Watch, and NPR's Throughline, particularly regarding Sudanese and South Sudanese affairs.