Biography

A graduate of the University of Aberdeen, and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, David Ross first taught at Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone for three years before coming to the department of History at SFU in September 1968. He received tenure in 1973 and was promoted associate professor in 1988. Together with Philip Stigger and Peter Kup, David taught a wide range of courses in African history to large numbers of students at SFU. The course offerings in African histor have been, and continue to be a valuable and distinctive feature of the department of History at SFU. David's scholarship focussed on the west African kingdom of Dahomey. Over time, and not without the attendant difficulties of challenging prevailing orthodoxies, he became known as the author of a series of critical articles on the slave trade in Dahomey and the historiography of the precolonial kingdom.