Joanna Davidson

Joanna Davidson is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Associate Director of the Kilachand Honors College at Boston University. Davidson has conducted long-term ethnographic research in Guinea-Bissau focused on rural West Africans’ responses to environmental and economic change, as well as transformations in marriage and gender relations. She is the author of Sacred Rice: Identity, Environment, and Development in Rural West Africa (Oxford University Press, 2016) and the co-editor of Narrating Illness: Prospects and Constraints (Oxford Interdisciplinary Press, 2016). Her current book project focuses on widowhood, women’s songs, and naming practices among rural Jola in Guinea-Bissau. Prior to becoming an academic anthropologist, Joanna worked for several years with a range of progressive non-governmental international development organizations in Africa and Latin America on issues such as refugee resettlement, indigenous rights, women’s and rural development, and social entrepreneurship.