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The Centre of African Studies has paid tribute to Professor Andrew Walls, a leading academic in African Christianity, who passed away this month.

Professor Walls was an incredibly inspiring intellectual and a great friend of the Centre of African Studies (CAS) at the University of Edinburgh.

On Thursday 12 August, Professor Walls passed away in hospital in Aberdeen aged 93.

Professor Walls was an Honorary Professor of World Christianity, pioneering historian of Christian missions and World Christianity, and a friend of CAS, based at the School of Social and Political Science.

While he was based at the Centre of Non-Western Christianity (now Centre for the Study of World Christianity) in the University of Edinburgh’s New College, Andrew supported and supervised several CAS students, enthusiastically helped in running and participating in several events, and worked hard to keep the centre going in challenging times.

As a leading academic in African Christianity, he shaped the field and touched the hearts of many Africanists, especially through his generous and passionate mentorship of students and junior academics, in Edinburgh and across Africa.

Our most sincere condolences go to his wife Ingrid, who attended several CAS seminars and conferences with Andrew, his daughter Christine, son Andrew junior, and granddaughter Alice.

He will be hugely missed by the many who worked with him in Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Liverpool, Princeton, at the Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission and Culture in Akropong-Akuapen in Ghana, and in many other institutions and places where he promoted and taught the study of World Christianity.

The Centre of African Studies will be forever grateful of his kindness, generosity and ground-breaking intellectual contributions.