Northwestern State University Professor of Social Sciences Dr. Dean Sinclair has been awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant and will spend the spring semester lecturing and conducting research at Moi University in Eldoret, Kenya. Sinclair is one of approximately 1,100 U.S. faculty and professionals who will travel abroad through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program in 2011-12.

Sinclair will be researching urban geography issues in Kenya.

“This is an outgrowth of earlier research I have done in Kenya,” said Sinclair. “I received an NSU Enhancement Grant to do research in Kenya and Tanzania. The research I do will help me build a course in African geography at Northwestern State.”

Sinclair also did research in Africa when he was the recipient of the Clyde N. Bostick Professorship in 2007-08.

“The past support I received from the university was very helpful to me as I applied for the Fulbright Scholar grant,” said Sinclair. “It laid the groundwork I needed.”

Sinclair has been a member of Northwestern’s faculty since 1998. He worked as an intelligence officer for the Central Intelligence Agency and as city planner and director of the Department of Planning and Management for the City of North Charleston, N.C.

Sinclair joined NSU’s faculty as assistant professor in the School of Social Sciences and was promoted to associate professor in 2005 and professor in 2010. He teaches all geography courses offered at Northwestern.

From 2001 until 2006, Sinclair was director of the Southern Studies Institute at NSU and editor of Southern Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of the South. He was later book editor of Southern Studies.



He was a member of the Natchitoches Parish Planning Commission from 2002 until 2009. Gov. Bobby Jindal appointed Sinclair to the Louisiana Folklife Commission in 2008.

Sinclair received a bachelor’s degree from the College of Charleston, a master’s from the University of Delaware and the University of South Carolina and a doctorate from Louisiana State University.