Konrad Tuchscherer

Dr. Konrad Tuchscherer is Associate Professor of History and Director of External Scholarships and Fellowships at St. John’s University in New York. A specialist in African history and languages, his research focuses particularly on the history of writing in Africa and the preservation of African manuscript traditions.

Tuchscherer earned his Ph.D. from SOAS University of London, where he studied as a Marshall Scholar and Fulbright Scholar. His research has taken him throughout West and Central Africa, with especially extensive work in Cameroon and Sierra Leone. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Cameroon and, most recently, a 2022–23 Fulbright U.S. Scholar at Njala University in Sierra Leone.

For more than two decades, Tuchscherer has served as Co-Director of the Bamum Scripts and Archives Project at the Royal Palace in Foumban, Cameroon, working with Bamum colleagues to preserve, document, and study one of Africa’s most remarkable indigenous manuscript traditions. His work has also contributed to the digital encoding of the Bamum script, helping make this African writing system accessible in the digital age. His scholarship on African writing systems has appeared in leading academic publications and contributed to a major Smithsonian exhibition on African scripts.

At St. John’s, Tuchscherer founded the Africana Studies Program and has long promoted international and experiential education, including leading students on programs in Cameroon and The Gambia. He also co-produced Ghosts of Amistad: In the Footsteps of the Rebels, filmed in Sierra Leone and winner of the American Historical Association’s John E. O’Connor Film Award.

Tuchscherer was a research mentor and advisor to Sultan Mouhammad-Nabil Mforifoum Mbombo Njoya during the future King’s years at St. John’s. Their collaboration grew from the study and preservation of Bamum history and written heritage and has continued through King Njoya’s accession to the throne.