UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Sinfree Makoni, Liberal Arts professor of African studies and applied linguistics and director of the African Studies program in the College of the Liberal Arts, has been awarded the 2026 President’s Award for Excellence in Academic Integration.
The award is given to a full-time faculty member who has exhibited extraordinary achievement in the integration of teaching, research, or creative accomplishment and service.
Nominators said that Makoni exemplifies the ideal of academic integration by weaving together his research, teaching, mentoring and service. He elevates his students and supports his colleagues, strengthening his field, while contributing to the University and the broader public.
He has played a central role in the creation of a highly interdisciplinary program in African studies, which includes dual doctoral degrees from comparative literature, applied linguistics, geography, political science, and French and francophone studies, including students who are doing a minor in African Studies from across the University in the areas of architectural engineering, education, international relations, art education, rural sociology and many more.
Makoni’s research examines the relationships among language, power, and identity in colonial and postcolonial contexts, with particular attention to the Global South. By using concepts that originate from Africa to describe Europe or Global North, he said, his work “reverses the gaze.” The objective of his scholarship is not to replace Western truths with African ones but, rather, to build a community of validation in which different intellectual traditions test each other’s claims without fear or the use of a hierarchy.
He has authored or co-authored six books, co-edited 21 more, and published more than 60 journal articles. He also has delivered numerous invited lectures and keynote addresses at international conferences that span four continents, including his talks in Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, Germany, France, Denmark, Spain, Malaysia and Brazil. He will be receiving an honorary doctorate of letters at the University of Edinburgh in recognition of his work in decolonial applied linguistics and for promoting the Global South.
Nominators said that in his decades-long career Makoni has persistently challenged assumptions about multilingualism and the politics of language, urging scholars and students alike to move beyond Eurocentric frameworks and recognize the intellectual and philosophical contributions of the Global South. Nominators called his work a “sociolinguistic decolonial perspective” that engages these long-overlooked, yet influential scholars.
Nominators said his impact is evident through the African Studies Global Virtual Forum, also known as the Global Virtual Forum, which Makoni founded in 2020.
“This initiative exemplifies academic integration at its best,” a nominator said. “It’s a genuinely global, inclusive and dialogic space for exchange. It is an expansive and stimulating forum with broad participation that fosters collaboration across the Global South, connecting participants from diverse contexts such as Brazil and Sudan. In an academic landscape where discussions of decoloniality often remain regionally confined, Makoni’s forum is concrete and inclusive, offering a space where scholars, students and community members can think collectively about language, power and justice.”
Each week, the forum brings together more than 600 scholars, students, artists and activists from around the world to engage in dialogue. The forum has hosted more than 200 speakers from diverse fields, ranging from public health to architecture, and has reached a global audience through its YouTube channel, with more than 26,500 views from more than 30 countries. The forum’s talks have inspired a 10-volume book series.
Nominators noted that Makoni refers to the process in which academic publishing captures live debates and collective voices as “unbooking.”
“Makoni’s ‘unbooking’ challenges traditional academic hierarchies by dissolving the boundaries between author and audience, producing texts that are participatory and dynamic,” a nominator said. “This work reflects Makoni’s wider vision to democratize how disciplinary knowledge is produced by opening the University to community knowledge and fostering ‘inclusive dissensus’ grounded in respect and engagement. These efforts express a vision of scholarship that is simultaneously local and global.”