David Lloyd is a specialist in African History, particularly sub-Saharan economic history, who did his graduate degree work in European and then African History respectively at The Pennsylvania State University (M.A.,1969) and University of California, Los Angeles (Ph.D., 1978). He taught history as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Tanzania, East Africa in the late 1960s, as a Fulbright Scholar in Zaire, Central Africa in the mid-1970s, and as a lecturer at the University of Calabar, Nigeria, West Africa from the late 1970s through the early 1980s. He joined the History department at St. Lawrence University in 1985, and he has been the Chair of the History department since 1994. He also has been one the founding members of the interdisciplinary African Studies Program at St. Lawrence University, Coordinator of the African Studies Advisory Board, and centrally involved in the Kenya Semester Abroad Program. He teaches an array of courses from the introduction to African studies, to regional and thematic courses on west and south Africa, to a senior level seminar on African development. His research and publications focus on pre-colonial Africa History, especially the agrarian economic history of east, central and west Africa, and the teaching of African studies at the undergraduate level, including study abroad in Africa.

His interest in history as a career first emerged during his secondary school education when he founded a history club and received an award in history. He pursued history as his major field during his undergraduate and graduate training, focusing primarily on U.S. and European History, but it was his Peace Corps experience in East Africa that turned his attention and interest to African History. His subsequent Ph.D. training at UCLA focused on African History, and his passion for this field took him back immediately upon graduation to Africa where he taught for six years at the University of Calabar, Nigeria, West Africa. At the University of Calabar he became part of an editorial board for a journal on Nigerian History, and he organized a departmental library and collected a diversity of historical resource materials.

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