In Memoriam: Elleni Centime Zeleke

We are deeply saddened by the loss of our colleague and friend, Professor Elleni Centime Zeleke, who died in July after a long battle with cancer. Centime joined the editorial collective soon after her arrival at Columbia in 2018. She quickly made an enormous contribution, editing a Kitabkhana on Adom Getachew's book Worldmaking After Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination and then (in collaboration with Arash Davari) the special section “Third World Historical.”Centime received a doctorate in the history of social and political thought from York University, Toronto, in 2016. Her widely acclaimed 2020 book Ethiopia in Theory: Revolution and Knowledge Production, 1964-2016 has been a focus of discussion and debate ever since its publication. As with that earlier book, the manuscript that she was completing at the time of her death, A Jewel in the Ear: The 2020 Ethiopian Civil War and The Limits of Africanist Thought, brought together her deep engagement with social theory and intellectual history with her dedication to liberatory politics in the Black world.Many scholars hope to bring together political commitment, empirical rigor, and theoretical commitment. Centime actually achieved this with a fierce intelligence and indominable spirit. At CSSAAME we have been lucky and grateful to have been part of her work. Our editorial board and contributing editors are planning a memorial section in her honor, a small token of admiration for someone extraordinary.Thank you for everything, Centime. We miss you.