I feel like I have talked about them a few dozen times, so I will spare you any biographical information. If you don’t know about Toumani Diabate, the great kora player, or Ali Farka Toure, at one point Africa’s greatest musical asset, then you should. As spring and summer approach and a few road trips beckon, I suspect this will be the music of my travels. It isn’t the Sahara, but with endless (paved) roads ahead, this music will undoubtedly be a large part of the soundtrack of these journeys.
Toumani Diabate and the late great Ali Farka Toure
My name is Michael Sean Gallagher. I am a Lecturer in Digital Education at the Centre for Research in Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh. I am Co-Founder and Director of Panoply Digital, a consultancy dedicated to ICT and mobile for development (M4D); we have worked with USAID, GSMA, UN Habitat, Cambridge University and more on education and development projects. I was a researcher on the Near Futures Teaching project, a project that explores how teaching at The University of Edinburgh unfold over the coming decades, as technology, social trends, patterns of mobility, new methods and new media continue to shift what it means to be at university. Previously, I was the Research Associate on the NERC, ESRC, and AHRC Global Challenges Research Fund sponsored GCRF Research for Emergency Aftershock Forecasting (REAR) project. I was an Assistant Professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (한국외국어대학교) in Seoul, Korea. I have also completed a doctorate at University College London (formerly the independent Institute of Education, University of London) on mobile learning in the humanities in Korea.
