Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service

In his 8 years at Georgetown, Scott Taylor has earned a reputation as a scholar with broad interests and an enviable depth of real-world experience, which he now brings to his new role as Director of the African Studies Program. Originally from New York City, Taylor majored in government at Dartmouth and briefly pursued a career in banking before heading off to Emory University for a PhD in political science.

Africa remains widely misunderstood

Taylor has taught a variety of courses at Georgetown over the years, including African Politics and Governments; Business and Politics in the Developing World; and the African Studies Senior Seminar.

He has also maintained his involvement in the continent, most recently with a trip to Zambia for a project with the World Bank. Taylor has lived in Zambia and Zimbabwe and made 11 extended research visits to Southern and Central Africa in the last 15 years, also traveling extensively across the continent. He believes that "the beauty of being an academic is that not only do I get to travel to these wonderful places and meet fascinating people, but I get to pursue my own research topics, driven by a compelling intellectual puzzle."

Taylor's interests and expertise span many fields, making his classes attractive across majors. "My research and publications reflect an interest in politics and business, economic and political development, with a regional emphasis on Southern Africa. In the last couple of years, I have become particularly interested in questions of political culture and its role in development, an area that is perhaps more in the realm of anthropology, but which I hadn't fully considered in the past. That led me to my new research on corruption in a comparative context as well as my new book on the culture of African business."

Despite Africa's international importance, Taylor believes that "it is the case that Africa remains widely misunderstood, particularly by Americans, in part because it gets so little attention in our primary and secondary schools, in our homes, and notwithstanding some current initiatives, in our foreign policy." Taylor's efforts, and those of the African Studies faculty, staff, and students, aim to change this state of affairs.

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