Lee Cassanelli is Professor of History and Director of the African Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania, where he teaches African history, oral history, and comparative world history. His research interests focus on the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia and Somalia) from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. He is author of The Shaping of Somalia Society (1982) and co-editor of The Struggle for Land in Southern Somalia: The War Behind the War (1996). He has taught on the Horn of Africa course since its inception in 2008.