Felwine Sarr


Felwine Sarr is a Senegalese scholar, musician and writer born in Sine Saloum, Niodior Arrondissement. He studied Economics and has been teaching at the Gaston Berger University since 2007.

Biography

Born on 11 September 1972, Felwine Sarr conducted his primary and secondary education in Senegal, and then went to France where he obtained an agrégation in Economics. In 2011, he became dean of the Economics and Management faculty of the University Gaston Berger of Saint-Louis, and head of the new faculty of Civilizations, Religions, Arts and Communication of the same university, and for which he was in charge of the implementation. His lectures and academic research focus on economic policies, development, economy, econometrics, epistemology and history of religious ideas.

Publications and musical career

Sarr is also a writer and has been awarded the Grand Prix of Literary Associations 2016 for his work entitled "Afrotopia". He has published to date DAHIJ, 105 Rue Carnot, Médiations Africaines and "Afrotopia", which is an essay wherein he appeals to a conceptual decolonization and a reappropriation of the metaphors of their future by the Africans. As a musician he has published three musical pieces thus far: Civilisation ou Barbarie, Les Mots du Récit, and Bassai. With the writers Boubacar Boris Diop and Nafissatou Dia, he cofounded the publishing house known as Jimsaan. Since 2014, he is vice-president of the boards of directors at OSIWA. Felwine Sarr is also editor of the review Journal of African Transformation. In October 2016, he put together with Achille Mbembe the Ateliers de la Pensée which gathers thirty of Afro-diasporic scholars and artists in Dakar and Saint-Louis in order to think the contemporary world's transformations.
In 2018, Sarr and French art historian Bénédicte Savoy were asked by the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, to investigate the state of African heritage in French museums. As a result of this, Macron commissioned a report on the possibilities of restitution of African cultural heritage from France to Africa. This Report on the restitution of African cultural heritage was presented to Macron in November 2018 and published online in an official French version and an English translation.

Awards