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University of Chicago Anthropologists who work in Africa

Faculty
Students:
Preparing for the field
In the field
Writing up
Recent PhDs

Faculty:

• Jean Comaroff - Barolong, Botswana/South Africa; South Wales (UK); (history, colonialism and postcolonialism, ritual, medicine, the body, neoliberalism, crime, policing and public order)
• John Comaroff - Barolong (Tswana), Botswana/South Africa; (political and legal systems, historical anthropology, colonialism and postcoloniality, modernity and the politics of identity)
• Michael Dietler - Southern France; Kenya (Luo); (Archaeology and ethnoarchaeology, colonialism and postcoloniality, political economy, consumption, ritual, material culture, memory, identity politics)
• Kesha D. Fikes - Cape Verde Islands, Lusophone Africa, Portugal; (race and the bureaucracies of spatial mobility, the relationship between colonial migrant labor projects and post-colonial/post-independence migrant labor phenomena)
• François G. Richard - West Africa, Senegal; Archaeology/African historical experience, landscapes, complexity and political economy, memory, material culture, Marxist and social theory, survey methodology
• James Fernandez - Gabon, Dahomey, Togo, Ghana, Natal; Asturias, Spain; Ethnohistorical research in Madrid, Barcelona, Castile, Hamburg, Berlin, Frankfort, Cologne, Paris
• Russell Tuttle - Japan, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa (primates, bipedalism)
  

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Students:

Preparing for the Field

• Elizabeth Brummel - Kenya (Linguistic Anthropology; language ideology and language socialization among bilingual children who gain their second language outside the home; Samburu of Northern Kenya)
• Filipe Calvão - Angola/Mozambique (Colonialism and postcolonialism, the culture of capitalism and neoliberlism, commodity theory and circulation, theories of labor and value, state, sovereignty, law; the economy and governance of diamonds in Angola)
• Kerry Chance - Southern Africa (Politics of the Poor in the New South Africa: Post-apartheid protests originating in the townships and shack settlements against radical "disconnects" of electricity, water, medical services, and housing)
• Claudia Gastrow - Angola, Southern Africa (Portuguese empire, colonialism, urban anthropology, space and memory, empire, transnational approaches, migration visual anthropology)
• Anita Hannig - Awassa, Southern Nations, Nationalities & Peoples' State, Ethiopia (Diaspora and homecoming; management of ethnic diversity and conflict)
• Debora Heard (A) - Nubia/Egypt (State Power: Ideology, religion & material culture; archaeology of ideology: iconography, landscape & ritual; "The intersection of religion and politics in the establishment and maintenance of the Kushite (Napatan/Meroitic) state")
• Kathleen Lorne McDougall - South Africa (Genomics, Genealogy, Race; "Isolated Population?: The Production of Afrikaanerness in Post-Apartheid South Africa")
• Kathryn McHarry - Senegal (Theorizing childhood, bodies, health and intervention; biomedical technology in humanitarian aid/development; the humanitarian/aid development economy; "Pediatric growth monitoring and conceptions of children and childhood in Senegal's La Case de Tout Petits Program")
• George Paul Meiu - Kenya/East Africa (Sexuality, masculinities, the body, aesthetics, tourism, nationalism, postcolonialism, historicity)
• Kharnita Mohamed - South Africa (Anthropology of the senses, visual culture, media, disability; ethnography of the blind)
• Michal Ran - Senegal/West Africa (Refugee studies, post-conflict African politics, humanitarianism, citizenship and national belonging, religion, psychological anthropology)
• Balogun Theodore Rose - Liberia, Sierre Leone (Postcoloniality and Liberia's post-war reconstruction; anthropology of development, the state, postcolonial studies)
• LaShandra Sullivan - Angola/Sao Tome; Brazil (Oil economies, mineral extraction)
• Joshua Walker - Dem. Rep. Congo (History, politics, culture; moral economies -- production and consumption practices of labor, commodities and value with regard to diamond mining and trade, modern political orders, state, law, policing; belief systems: religion, witchcraft, the occult)

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In the Field

• Betsey Brada - Gaborone, Botswana; "The World is Our Clinic: Citizenship, Philanthropy, and the Logic of AIDS Interventions in Contemporary Botswana"
• Bernard Dubbeld (Jt. w/History) - Durban, South Africa; Inhabiting ‘Respectable Pasts': Wage Work, Masculinities, and the Dynamics of Beloning in Neo-Liberal South Africa"
• Jeremy Jones - Harare, Zimbabwe (Youth, gender, temporality (specifically the future), the everyday, value and representation); "The Everyday Construction of the Future Amongst Zimbabwe's Urban Youth")
• Azande Mangeango - Sudan, global Zande diaspora; "Performing the Nation (Sudan); CyberSpace, Commemoration, and the Social Production of Trans/National Identities"
• Gretchen Pfeil (Jt.Ling) - Dakar, Senegal; "Small Change, Big Changes: Religious Commitments and the High Stakes of Small Charitable Gifts in Dakar, Senegal"
• Mark Geraghty - Rwanda; An ethnographic investigation of Genocide Ideology in Rwanda
  
• Erik Lee Skjon (Jt.Ling.) - Pemba & Mecúfi Districts (Shankan Makhuwa dialect area), Cabo Delgado Province, N. Mozambique (morpho-syntax, ethno-regiionalism, areal linguistics, value circuits); "The Regional Dynamics of Ethnolinguistic Identity in Mozambique: Its Figures and Grounds in Three Makhuwa Networks"
• Erik Wimbley-Brodnax - Dakar, Senegal; "Psychiatry in the Land of the Penc: Islamic Faith Healing, Biomedicine and Talcott Parsons' Living Systems Hierarchy at Clinque Moussa Diop, Dakar, Senegal"
  

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Writing Up

• Robert Blunt - Kenya; "Fake Mau Maus and Ambiguous States: Oathing, Criminality and History in Contemporary Kenya" (about the Mungiki sect and the commuter taxi industry)
• Maureen Anderson - Abidjan & Agni Region of M'batto, Cote d'Ivoire; "Imagined Democracies and Nocturnal Communities: The State of Civil Society in Cote d'Ivoire"
• Jennifer Spruill - South Africa; "When the Rainbow is Not Enough: Sexual Citizenship in Post-Apartheid South Africa"
  

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Recent PhDs

• Mark Auslander - Chipata District, Eastern Province, Zambia; “Fertilizer has Brought Poison: Crises of Reproduction in Ngoni Society and History”
• Misty Bastian - Onitsha, Southeastern Nigeria; “The World as Marketplace: Historical, Cosmological and Popular Constructions of the Onitsha [Nigeria] Market System”
• William Bissell - Old Stone Town, Zanzibar, Tanzania; “‘City of Stone, Space of Contestation’: Urban Conservation and the Colonial Past in Zanzibar”
• Kathleen Blue (P) - Maboko, Lake Victoria, Western Kenya (Miocene); “Functional Morphology of the Forelimb in Victoriapithecus and Its Implication for Phylogeny within the Catarrhini”
• Vicki Brennan - Lagos, Nigeria; " ‘Singing the Same Song': Music, Morality and Movement in Yoruba Churches"
• Beth Anne Buggenhagen - Dakar, Senegal; “At Home in the Black Atlantic: Circulation, Domesticity and Value in the Senegalese Murid Trade Diaspora”
• Melinda Carter (P) - Kibale Forest National Park, Toro Province, Western Uganda; “Sensitivity of Stable Isotopes in Bone to Dietary Specialization and Niche Separation between Sympatric Primates in Kibale Forest National Park, Uganda
• Deborah Durham - Mahalapye, Botswana, Southern Africa; “Images of Culture: Being Herero and the Reconstruction of Cultural Identities in Liberal Democracy”
• Elizabeth Garland - Mweka, Tanzania; "State of Nature: Colonial Power, Neoliberal Capital, and Wildlife Management in Tanzania"
• Kelly Gillespie - Cape Town, South Africa; "Criminal Abstractions and the Post-Apartheid Prison"
• David Graeber - Vikinisisaony, Southern Imerina, Central Madagascar; “The Disastrous Ordeal of 1987: Memory and Violence in Rural Madagascar”
• Jan-Lodewijk Grootaers - Central African Republic (Zande); “A History and Ethnography of Modernity Among the Zande, Central African Republic”
• Shannon Jackson - Univ. of the Western Cape, Bellville, Cape Town, South Africa; “The South African Public Sphere and the Politics of Coloured Identity”
• Mikael Karlstrom - Kampala, Entebbe & Lkuwero Area, Uganda; “The Cultural Kingdom in Uganda : Popular Royalism and the Restoration of the Buganda Kingship”
• Anne-Maria Makhulu - Cape Town, South Africa; “Dismantling Homes, Dismantling Apartheid: The Politics and Practice of Squatting in Cape Town”
• Douglas Mirsky (P) - Comparative Primate Morphology; “Functional Morphology of Vertebral Foramina: A comparison of Fossil Hominids to Homo sapiens, Pan troglodytes and Papio SP with particular attention to KNM WT 1500”
• Charles Musiba (P) - Serengeti Region, Tanzania (Laetoli); “Laetoli Pliocene Paleoecology: A Reanalysis via Morphological and Behavioral Approaches”
• Zolani Ngwani - Univ of Fort Hare, Alice, KwaZulu-Natal?, South Africa; “The Politics of Campus and Community in South Africa: A Historical Ethnography of the University of Fort Hare”
• Rebecca Popenoe - Egawan, Niger; “‘Girls’ Work is Stomach Work’: Female Fatness, Sexuality, and Society Among the Azawagh Arabs (Moors) of Niger”
• Michael Ralph - Dakar, Senegal; "(At)Play in the Postcolony"
• Johanna Schoss - Malindi, Kenya; “Beach Tours and Safari Visions: Relations of Production and the Production of ‘Culture’ in Malindi, Kenya”
• Jesse Shipley - Legon, Ghana; “National Audiences and Consuming Subjects: A Political Genealogy of Performance in Neo-Liberal Ghana”
• James Smith - Taita Hills Region, Kenya; “Bewitching Development: The Moral Economy of Development and Anti-Development in Taita Kenya”
• Debra Spitulnik (Jt. Ling) - Kitwe & Lusaka + Bemba area (Northern Province), Zambia; “Radio Culture in Zambia : Audiences, Public Words, and the Nation State”
• Amy Stambach - Masama District, Kilamanjaro Region, Tanzania (+ Dar es Salaam); “Knowledge is Wealth: The Culture of Schooling Among the Chagga of Northern Tanzania”
• Hylton White - Melmoth, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa (Entembeni area, northern Zululand); “Domesticity and the Politics of Customary Rule in Post-Apartheid Zululand”