Sara Byala

Sara Byala is a senior lecturer in critical writing at the University of Pennsylvania and associate director of the Penn Global Documentary Institute (PGDI). South African born, Byala holds a PhD in history from Harvard University and a BA from Tufts University. Her research into the ways that capitalist systems intersect with social and cultural forces in Africa culminated in Bottled: How Coca-Cola Became African (Hurst, 2023). Based upon extensive archival research and fieldwork in Africa, Bottled suggests that the history and footprint of Coca-Cola in Africa is best understood as evidence of the company’s localness. Byala’s early work explored the import of colonial archives in post-apartheid South Africa through the biography of a cultural history museum and resulted in A Place that Matters Yet: John Gubbins’s MuseumAfrica in the Postcolonial World (University of Chicago Press, 2013). She is currently embarking on a new project relating to religion on the African continent. Byala teaches a wide range of courses about Africa, including ones on Coca-Cola, soccer, truth commissions, and cocoa. She also regularly teaches global seminars, which include travel to countries in Africa.