Martin A. Klein

Martin A. Klein (born 1934 in suburban New York City) is an Africanist and an emeritus professor in the History Department at the University of Toronto specialising in the Atlantic slave trade, and francophone West Africa: Senegal, Guinea, and Mali.^[1][2] He obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism at Northwestern University (1951-1955) and a Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy in history at the University of Chicago (1957-1964). Klein worked as an assistant professor at the University of California Berkeley from 1965 till 1970, later teaching African history at the University of Toronto as an associate professor and later full professor from 1970 until his retirement in 1999.^{[3][4][better source needed]} As a Fulbright Fellow, Klein taught for a year at Lovanium University in Kinshasa.^[2]

He was a president of the African Studies Association (US, 1991-1997) and of the Canadian Association of African Studies. In 2001, Klein received a Distinguished Africanist Award from the African Studies Association.^[5] In 2010, the American Historical Association awarded the first annual Martin A. Klein Prize instituted in his name for the most distinguished work of scholarship on African history published in English during the previous calendar year.^[6][7]