Research Students

I am interested in supervising students working on

• international development
• technologies of the social
• governance, governmentalities and the state
• civil society and NGOs
• witchcraft , healing and religion
• poverty, inequality and exclusion
• social policy and social development
• the anthropology of Christianity
• the anthropology of science and technology

Current Research

My recent work explores new technologies of social organisation in the form of civil society organisations and participatory institutions in Tanzania and internationally. Some of this work was undertaken as part of the DFID funded Religions and Development Research Programme at the University of Birmingham. My recent work, conducted while I was a Senior Fellow with  Research on Poverty Alleviation in Tanzania examines the relation between culture and economic change and the  implications of the  transition to the growth agenda  for development policy and practice in Tanzania.

Current Teaching

I am currently Head of the Anthropology Discipline Area. I have previously taught courses on International Development, the Anthropology of Religion, Introduction to Business Anthropology  and Research Design for postgraduate students. 

I studied for my BA in Social Anthropology at the London School of Economics where I also did my PhD awarded in 1993. My doctoral fieldwork was undertaken in Ulanga District , Southern Tanzania.  In addition to my work at the University of Manchester, I have worked with a number of development organisations on long and short term assignments.

I work on issues of social transformation in East Africa , mostly in Tanzania, and on issues related to international development as a system of global ordering and as a kind of social practice. My research covers four main areas

• religious change in Africa, including the imapcts of Christianity, ideas of self and embodiment and the place of religion in discourses about Africa.
• the place of witchcraft in social orders, including strategies for dealing with witchcraft, innovations in anti- witchcraft practices and the place of witchcraft in academic and policy knowledges.
• international development as a social practice and its specialised knowledge forms, including policy making, particpatory methods and concepts of agency and the person.
• poverty , social exclusion and destitution as analytcial problems and as outcomes of social ordering internationally.

Much of my work derives from ongoing engagement in the issues I write about through working in the development sector as a social development specialist in Tanzania and internationally. I have expertise in several core social development areas including poverty , social policy, social protection and public sector reform .