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. She 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 articles in leading journals such as Current Anthropology, American Ethnologist, Ethnos, and Comparative Studies in Society and History. At the intersection of political and economic anthropology, her research examines state processes, border regions, infrastructure, public life and the governance of material flows, from waste and water to off-shore oil, plastics, and indigenous commodities. Chalfin’s recently published book, Waste Works, explores the politics of urban form through the case study of popular responses to infrastructural breakdown in Ghana’s planned, mid-century modernist city of Tema. She earlier conducted research on maritime logistics and border security in Europe at the ports of Antwerp, Zeebrugge and Rotterdam under the auspices of the World Customs Organization.
Chalfin is currently engaged in new research on plastic in collaboration with colleagues at Ghana’s University for Development Studies and Nuku Studio, a photography and research collective in Tamale, Ghana. Spanning anthropology, architecture and design, these concerns shape a pedagogy she calls ‘Lateral Anthropology’ exploiting the methodological frictions between Lab, Field, Studio and Archive. Chalfin has supervised 20 students to PhD completion during her tenure at UF. Chalfin regularly teaches the graduate Proseminar in Cultural Anthropology, Economic Anthropology, Anthropology of Infrastructure, and Anthropology of the State. She is involved in the interdisciplinary undergraduate course, Impact of Materials on Society, where she covers the unit on plastic and is preparing a new course, Anthropology for the Anthropocene.
Chalfin served as Director of University of Florida Center for African Studies from 2016-2022 and was PI on three successive US Department of Education Title VI grants in African Area Studies. During the 2022-23 academic year Chalfin was on sabbatical at Aarhus University and collaborated with students and faculty at Aarhus School of Architecture. She has held fellowships at Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and received research grants from National Science Foundation, Wenner-Gren and Fulbright.
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.
Chalfin, 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.
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