Judith Byfield, Cornell associate professor of history, has been elected vice president of the African Studies Association (ASA). She will serve for one year, beginning in November.

The ASA is "the most prestigious association of Africanist scholars worldwide," said Salah Hassan, director of the Africana Studies and Research Center, in an announcement to the Africana community. "This is a great honor to the [Africana Center] and to Cornell."

Educated at Dartmouth College and Columbia University, Byfield is an expert on gender and labor history in western Africa. She joined the Cornell faculty in 2008 after teaching for 16 years at Dartmouth. She is based in the Africana Center with joint appointments in history and Africana studies.

Byfield has served on the ASA board of directors and is a co-convener of its women's caucus. Her publications include "The Bluest Hands: A Social and Economic History of Women Indigo Dyers in Western Nigeria, 1890-1940" (2002).

She is on the editorial board of the Journal of African History and the Indiana University Press series "Blacks in the Diaspora." She received a Fulbright Fellowship in 2002, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in 2003 and, most recently, a National Humanities Center Fellowship for her current project, a book on the Egba women's tax revolt in Nigeria.

The ASA's mission is to bring together individuals and institutions with a scholarly and professional interest in Africa and African affairs. The nonprofit organization publishes the scholarly journals African Studies Review and History in Africa, as well as scholarly books.