People

Academic - Director

Dr. David Pratten

Director, African Studies Centre; University Lecturer in the Social Anthropology of Africa

I joined the African Studies Centre in 2005-06. I am a social anthropologist and my post is a joint appointment with the Institute of Social Anthropology. I studied at Oxford, Manchester and SOAS, and previously taught at the universities of Edinburgh and Sussex.

Academic - Staff

Prof. William Beinart

Rhodes Professor of Race Relations & Director of Graduate Studies

William Beinart has been Rhodes Professor of Race Relations since 1997. The position was established in 1953 to research and teach on ‘race relations’ with special reference to southern Africa. It has become an African Studies post. Prior to this he worked in Historical Studies at the University of Bristol and was co-editor of the Journal of Southern African Studies and chair of its editorial board. He was the founding Director of the African Studies Centre at Oxford (2002-6), and co-chair of the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies (SIAS, 2006-8).
Dr. Neil Carrier

Departmental Lecturer in African Anthropology

Neil is involved in the teaching of the MSc in African Studies and also teaches and supervises graduate students in the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology. Neil has been involved in a wide range of research, mostly focused on the anthropology and history of East Africa and its diaspora. He has been working on a project examining the Somali-dominated Nairobi estate of Eastleigh as part of the Oxford Diasporas Programme team, exploring the historical and cultural underpinnings of Eastleigh’s diaspora-driven economy.
Dr. Nic Cheeseman

University Lecturer in African Politics

I joined the African Studies Centre in 2007-08, having previously been a Junior Research Fellow at New College, also at Oxford University. My training is in political science, and my time is split equally between the Department of Politics and International Relations and African Studies.
Dr. Andrea Purdeková

Departmental Lecturer in African Politics

I am a political scientist by training and at the African Studies Centre I convene an option on ‘Violence and Historical Memory in Eastern Africa.’ I have also taught at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and at Oxford’s Department of International Development (Refugee Studies Centre).

I hold a DPhil in Development Studies from Oxford (2011), an MSc (Distinction) in Forced Migration from Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre (2007) and an MA (Distinction) in International Relations from Johns Hopkins SAIS (2005).
Dr. Jonny Steinberg

Departmental Lecturer in African Studies; Research Associate, Centre for Criminology

Dr Steinberg is the author of five books, four of which explore South African people and institutions in the wake of the transition to democracy. The institutions he has studied are the police, the prison, the farm and the clinic. The people he has written about have generally been men. The common thread between these projects has been an investigation into how political transition has changed the filigrees of unwritten rules through which individuals understand their lives and relate to others.

Academic - Affiliate

Dr. Julie Soleil Archambault

Ioma Evans-Pritchard Research Fellow

I joined the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies in 2011 and have a joint appointment in African Studies and Anthropology. I completed my PhD in Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies in 2010 and have since held teaching positions at the LSE and at the Centre of West African Studies, U of Birmingham.
Dr. Gregory Deacon

British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow

I've been working in the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies since September 2011, on a project looking at Pentecostal / Evangelical Christianity in Kenya – especially its role in survival, politics and economics. In practice, that means a year publishing from my doctoral thesis, a year of fieldwork in Kenya and then writing a book about it all. There’s some supervising and teaching too to keep me busy. My interest in all this is professional, as Pentecostal Studies is a growing field, but also personal as Kenya’s been my second home for over 15 years now.
Dr. Hélène Neveu Kringelbach

Oxford Diaspora Programme Research Fellow

Dr Hélène Neveu Kringelbach completed her D.Phil. in Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford in 2005. She held an ESRC postdoctoral fellowship in 2005-06, followed by a Departmental Lecturership in African Studies in 2006-08. From 2008 to 2011, she held a teaching post as the Evans Pritchard Departmental Lecturer in African Anthropology (shared post between the African Studies Centre and the School of Anthropology), in association with St Anne’s College.