Paulla Ebron joined the department in 1992. Ebron is the author of Performing Africa, a work based on her research in The Gambia that traces the significance of West African praise-singers in transnational encounters. A second project focuses on tropicality and regionalism as it ties West Africa and the U.S. Georgia Sea Islands in a dialogue about landscape, memory and political uplift. This project is entitled, "Making Tropical Africa in the Georgia Sea Islands." For the past four years she has taken a team of students to Charleston, South Carolina, to participate in the Stanford Sea Island Field School in collaboration with the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture.