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Brenda Chalfin, Ph.D.

Brenda Chalfin
Professor, Department of Anthropology and Center for African Studies
Director, Center for African Studies
Office: Grinter Hall, Room 427, Main Office
Phone: 352-392-2183
Email: bchalfin@ufl.edu
African Studies Faculty Profile

Education

  • Ph.D. Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, 1998
  • B.A. Anthropology, Amherst College, 1986

Research Interests

Waste, Cities, Infrastructure, Urban Environments, Sanitation, Materiality, Plastics, Ports, Off-shore Oil, Maritime Frontiers, Bureaucracy, International Organizations, Borders, Interdisciplinarity, Architecture, Design, Political Anthropology, Economic Anthropology, Anthropology of the State, Governance, Biopolitics, Science and Technology Studies, Political Economy, Globalization, Commodities.


Personal Statement

Brenda Chalfin is Professor of Anthropology and African Studies at the University of Florida where she served as Director of the Center for African Studies from 2016-2022. Chalfin is the author of 3 books: Waste Works: Vital Politics in Urban Ghana (Duke, 2023); Neoliberal Frontiers: An Ethnography of Sovereignty in West Africa (Chicago 2010) and Shea Butter Republic (Routledge 2004) and numerous peer-reviewed articles. Her research examines state processes, border regions, urbanization, public life and the governance of material flows, from plastics and waste, to water, off-shore oil and indigenous commodities.

Professor Chalfin’s recent work explores the politics of urban form through the case study of popular responses to infrastructural breakdown in Ghana’s city of Tema. She is currently pursuing a new project in partnership with colleagues in Ghana and Uganda addressing plastics, water supply and urban development. During the 2022-23 academic year Chalfin was on sabbatical at Aarhus University as visiting faculty member in Global Studies and collaborating with Aarhus School of Architecture to advance her knowledge of studio and design-based inquiry to inform Anthropology teaching and research.

Chalfin has been affiliated with University of Ghana, Stellenbosch University (South Africa), Harvard University Radcliffe Institute, Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), and received grants from US Department of Education, Social Science Research Council, National Science Foundation and Wenner-Gren. Chalfin has supervised 20 PhD degrees in Anthropology and mentored and recruited numerous African nationals in graduate study at University of Florida and hosted 3 Fulbright scholars during her tenure as Director of the Center of African Studies.

Dr. Chalfin has held fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the University of Ghana’s Institute of African Studies and been a recipient of Fulbright, Wenner-Gren, and National Science Foundation grants. Dr. Chalfin earned her PhD in anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. Her publications include Neoliberal Frontiers: An Ethnography of Sovereignty in West Africa (University of Chicago Press, 2010), Shea Butter Republic: State Power, Global Markets, and the Making of an Indigenous Commodity (Routledge, 2004), and journal articles in American Ethnologist, Current Anthropology, and Politique africaine. The January 2016 issue of Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, includes the article “Wastelandia: Infrastructure and the Commonwealth of Waste in Urban Ghana.”


Positions and Honors

Positions and Employment

  • 2022-23- Visiting Scholar, Department of Global Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark
  • Spring 2023- Visiting Scholar, Aarhus School of Architecture, Denmark
  • 2019-2022- International Advisory Board Member, Danish Social Science Research Council grant, “Port polities. Logistics, Political orders and New hegemons in the land-sea nexus,”
  • 2018-2021-Research Fellow, Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Stellenbosch University, South Africa
  • 2016-2021- International Advisory Board Member, Finish Academy of Sciences Grant, “Transit, Trade and Travel,”
  • 2018-2022- International Advisory Board Member, Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs Grant, “Port Efficiency and Public Private Capacity in Ghana,”
  • 2022, 2016, 2012, 2010-11, 2008-9, 2000-01, 1994-5, 1990-Visiting Researcher/Research Affiliate, Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana
  • 2016 – present, Director, Center for African Studies, University of Florida
  • 2013-present, Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Florida
  • 2013-present, Faculty Affiliate, Center for African Studies, University of Florida
  • 2013-present, Faculty Affiliate, Center for International Business Education and Research, University of Florida
  • 2013-present, Faculty Affiliate, School of Natural Resources and the Environment, University of Florida
  • 2007-2013, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Florida
  • 2007-2013, Faculty Affiliate, Center for African Studies, University of Florida
  • 2007-2013, Faculty Affiliate, Center for International Business Education and Research, University of Florida
  • 2001-2007, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Florida
  • 2001-2007, Faculty Affiliate, African Studies, University of Florida

Other Experience and Professional Memberships

  • Visiting Researcher, Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon. 2010-2011, 2008-2009, 2000-2001, 1994-1995, 1990
  • 2014-2017, Board Member, African Studies Association
  • 2015-2017, Chair of Publications Committee, African Studies Association
  • Reviewer, American Council of Learned Societies, Lewis and Clark Award, 2012, 2013, 2014
  • 2009-2011, 2014, Reviewer, National Science Foundation, Cultural Anthropology Section
  • Member, Editorial Board, Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge University Press)
  • Member, Editorial Board, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space (Sage Publications)
  • Member, American Anthropological Association
  • Member, Society for Political and Legal Anthropology
  • Member, American Ethnological Society
  • Member, Society for Cultural Anthropology
  • Member, Society for Economic Anthropology
  • Member, Association for Africanist Anthropology
  • Member, African Studies Association

Honors

 


Selected Publications

Chalfin, Brenda. 2014. Public Things, Excremental Politics, and the Infrastructure of Bare Life in Ghana’s city of Tema. American Ethnologist 41(1):92-109.

9780226100616Chalfin, Brenda. 2012. Border Security as Late-Capitalist ‘Fix’. In A Companion to Border Studies, edited by Thomas M. Wilson and Hastings Donnan, pp. 283-300. Blackwell, Malden, MA.

Chalfin, Brenda. 2010. Recasting Maritime Governance in Ghana: The Neo-Developmental State and the Port of Tema. Journal of Modern African Studies 48(4):573-598.

Chalfin, Brenda. 2010. Neoliberal Frontiers: An Ethnography of Sovereignty in West Africa. University of Chicago Press.image012

Chalfin, Brenda. 2009. La Renovation du Port de Tema. Economic Politique de la Frontiere Maritime du Ghana [Recasting the Port of Tema: The Political Economy of Ghana’s Maritime Frontier]. Politique Africaine 116:63-84.

Chalfin, Brenda. 2008. Sovereigns and Citizens in Close Encounter: Airport Anthropology and Customs Regimes in Neoliberal Ghana. American Ethnologist 35(4):519-538.

Chalfin, Brenda. 2008. Cars, the Customs Service and Sumptuary Rule in Contemporary Ghana. Comparative Studies in Society and History 50(2):424-453.

Chalfin, Brenda. 2004. Shea Butter Republic: State Power, Global Markets and the Making of an Indigenous Commodity, Routledge, New York.

More Publications Available on Google Scholar


Contribution to Science

 


Research Support

Ongoing Research Support

US Department of Education
  • Title VI Award Center for African Studies
  • 2014-2018
  • Total Award $650,000 per annum

Completed Research Support (within the past three years)

National Science Foundation
  • PI, with Co-PI Donald Berces (UF PhD student)
  • “The Emergence and Impact of Law in Oceanic Space,”
  • Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant, Cultural Anthropology and
    Law, Social and Behavioral Sciences Division
  • $23,946 Awarded August 2015
  • Award #00097895/00123631
Social Science Research Council and Mellon Foundation
  • Oceanic Studies: Seas as Sites and Subjects of Inquiry
  • Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship Workshop
  • Summer 2014
  • $10,000

Courses Taught