Dr. Holly Hanson is Emeritus Professor of History at Mt Holyoke College in Massachusetts. She is a social historian with a variety of research interests, including agrarian change in Africa, social history of the Buganda kingdom, pre-colonial African political culture, and globalization as a historical process. These interests recently culminated in her new book, Landed Obligation: The Practice of Power in Buganda, which is part of the Heinemann Social History of Africa series. Hanson has also published numerous articles on a variety of topics, from Bugandan women to global inequality. In addition to teaching, Hanson chaired the Five College African Scholars Program, is a consultant for the Uganda Society, and was recently appointed as the sole historian to the Department of Education’s Title VI National Centers Panel, a group that determines all federal funding for African studies. Hanson has also won numerous awards and distinctions, including dissertation fellowships and teaching awards, a Fulbright Research Grant to study land control as an expression of political power and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship.