Jacqueline-Bethel Tchouta Mougoué continues to build an impressive body of scholarship in African history, marked by new publications, translations, and a major forthcoming book. Her second book, tentatively titled Pan-African Pioneers and Religious Activism in Africa, is under contract with the University of North Carolina Press as part of the “InterConnections: The Global 20th Century” series. The project originated in her early archival research in Cameroon, where encountering fragile, flood-damaged materials highlighted the urgency of preserving historical records. As she recounts, “When I arrived at Cameroon’s French-language National Archives as a PhD student in 2011, I was shocked and surprised to see very old primary sources drying out on a clothing line.” After learning that the archives had been flooded, Mougoué “thought of how fragile our ability to recover certain histories can be,” a realization that led her to “scan and photograph anything and everything related to gender and politics in Cameroon.” That process produced an expansive archive of materials, which she revisited years later, leading to an unexpected discovery that would shape the trajectory of the project.
“Looking through the transcriptions in 2017, I noticed a term unknown to me, ‘Baha’i,’” she explains. Initially uncertain of its meaning—“I imagined that ‘Baha’i’ was a secret male society in Cameroon”—she soon discovered that it referred to a global religion with deep, but often overlooked, connections to the region. “I came across a wealth of information connecting the Baha’i Faith to Cameroon,” she notes, adding that she was “floored” not to have encountered it earlier. This discovery opened the door to extensive collaboration and source-sharing, as members of Baha’i communities contributed materials and insights, at times generously overwhelming her with archival sources—what colleagues jokingly described as “a good problem to have—too many primary sources!”
Drawing on thousands of archival documents, including handwritten letters and newly shared primary sources from Baha’i communities, the book traces the movements of Baha’i pioneers of color—Cameroonians, Nigerians, Black Americans, and Persians—across West Africa from the 1950s to the 1970s. These individuals, whom she notes are called “pioneers” to distinguish them from Western missionaries, established communities across borders while advancing religious, racial, and political agendas that centered Africa. Mougoué emphasizes that they “saw themselves as key players in global worldmaking in the postwar era,” positioning Africa as “a cornerstone for Baha’i initiatives promoting global harmony and equity.” By following their interconnected lives, the project highlights how they cultivated “transnational religious identities and lives” while pursuing broader visions of social transformation.
The book is structured around seven chapters, each following a different group of Baha’i pioneers to illuminate broader themes. Together, these chapters explore how they sought alternative paths to racial harmony, gender equality, and global solidarity, while building lives that crossed national and cultural boundaries. Reflecting this emphasis on interconnected histories, Mougoué links chapters through “connections as diverse as places, memories, and dreams,” highlighting how pioneers communicated, formed relationships, and exchanged cultural and political ideas during a period of decolonization and racial activism. At the same time, the project speaks to present-day concerns: it offers a history that moves beyond Euro-American frameworks and instead foregrounds diasporic experience, transnational belonging, and global visions of equity.
Additional publications further reflect the scope and impact of her work. The French translation of her 2019 book, Genre, Séparatisme et Corporéité du Nationalisme au Cameroun, is forthcoming in 2027 with Spears Books, expanding its accessibility to readers in Cameroon and beyond. In February 2026, she also published a new open-access article in the Journal of African History, “‘A Man of Africa’: Emotions and Political Kinship in Forming Transnational Connections,” contributing new insights into the formation of transnational political communities.
Across these projects, Mougoué’s work foregrounds the importance of transnational connections, historical recovery, and Africa-centered visions of global belonging.