From May 30 to June 3, 2016, Wannachai Kampeera, Ph.D., representing the Faculty of Arts, was invited by the Thai Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, to visit Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia. The purpose of this trip was to explore possibilities in creating academic partnerships with the University of Addis Ababa, especially its Center for African and Oriental Studies. University executives, such as Hirut Wolderariam, Vice President for Institutional Development, Melaku Wakuma Duguma, Director of Graduate Programs, and Kidist Gebreselassie, Director of the Center for African and Oriental Studies, expressed their interest in collaborating at the graduate level in the field of Southeast Asian studies. After the meeting, Dr Kampeera gave a lecture entitled Languages of the Future to the graduate students at the University.
In addition to the official visit at the University, Dr Kampeera had opportunities to enjoy local delicacies and visited the National Museum of Ethiopia. The National Museum collections are ranked among the most important in sub-Saharan Africa. As part of his museum tour, Dr Kampeera also got to view the skeleton of Lucy, a fossilized hominid discovered in 1974 at the site of Hadar in Ethiopia. Lucy is a 3.2 million-year-old member of Australopithecus afarensis and the most complete skeleton of an early human ancestor ever discovered. Lucy was called “the grandmother of humanity” as she is considered an important benchmark in the study of human evolution.