We have created the following list by asking people to nominate their programs and provide the following information. If you’re interested in providing information about your economic anthropology program here, or need to edit your entry, please contact Sarah Lyon (sarah.lyon [at] uky [dot] edu).
ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY PROGRAM LIST
(volunteered information)
Arizona State University
Indiana University
Ohio State University
Princeton University
Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona
University of Calgary
University of Kentucky
University of Maine
University of South Florida
University of Sussex (includes information about the MA in the Social Anthropology of the Global Economy (MA SAGE))
Arizona State University
Faculty with an Interest in Economic Anthropology:
David Abbott
H. Russell Bernard
Robert Boyd
Shauna BurnSilver
Michelle Hegmon
Kim Hill
Daniel Hruschka
Sarah Mathew
Christopher Morehart
Michael Smith
Pauline Weissner
Amber Wutich
Additional Information:
The Department offers graduate courses in economic anthropology and closely related topics. The archaeology program has strengths in the study of ancient systems of production and exchange, as well as economic (and social) inequality. The socio-cultural program has particular strengths in institutional, evolutionary, and biocultural approaches to economic anthropology.
Indiana University
Faculty with an Interest in Economic Anthropology:,
Susan Alt
Eduardo Brondizio
Beth Buggenhagen
Sarah Osterhoudt
Laura Scheiber
Additional Information:
The Department offers courses in the anthropology of development and economic anthropology. The economic anthropology in our department is closely connected with food studies. Over the years many of our graduate students have joined SEA and have worked closely with the organization. Until recently we had three past presidents of SEA on the faculty.
Ohio State University
Faculty with an Interest in Economic Anthropology:,
Jeffrey H. Cohen
Sean Downey
Kris Gremillon
Nick Kawa
Joy McCorriston
Mark Moritz
Barbara Piperata
Anna Willow
Additional Information:
The Department offers graduate courses in economic anthropology including ones on inequality and theory. The faculty emphasizes strong training in methods and empirically grounded research (regardless of the area). We have ethnographic strengths in Latin America (particularly Mexico, Central America and Brazil), West Africa (particularly Cameroon), the archaeology of the Midwest US, Middle East and Central/Eastern Europe and the bioanth/bioarch of Europe, South America and the US. Graduate students in our program and with an economic interest have explored labor, property rights and tourism in South and Central America, migration in Mexico, South America and South Africa, welfare reforms in the US, democratic reforms in West Africa and political ecology in West Africa with support from internal and external funding agencies including the National Science Foundation and the Fulbright Hayes program.
Princeton University
Faculty with an Interest in Economic Anthropology:,
Julia Elyachar
Rena Lederman
Serguei Oushakine
Carolyn Rouse
Additional Information:
Over the past several years, we have offered student-initiated graduate tutorial courses in “Economic anthropology”, “Economic and finance anthropology”, and “Anthropology of development”. Detailed information about Princeton Anthropology’s graduate program is available at the website link above. Highlights include: (a) an intensive, fast-paced two-year residence requirement (that is, only two years of courses are required before students take their general examination and proceed forward to dissertation field research); (b) generous 5-year fellowships for all students (that is, everyone receives the same kind of support; additional funding is available to enable post-first year and post-second year summer research; fellowship monies can be used to jump-start dissertation fieldwork); (c) a small, supportive department with lots of contact between faculty and graduate students; and (d) an excellent record of post-graduation placement in tenure-track and post-doc positions.
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Faculty with an Interest in Economic Anthropology:
Jose Luis Molina
Hugo Valenzuela García
Additional Information:
The department offers graduate courses in Economic Anthropology and Human Ecology and faculty have expertise in Network Analysis.
University of Calgary
Faculty with an Interest in Economic Anthropology:
Gerlach, Craig
Hayashi, Naotaka
Peric, Sabrina
Smart, Alan
Smart, Josephine
Yessenova, Saulesh
Additional Information:
All graduate students do thesis development reading courses with their supervisor, which can focus on economic anthropology. The University of Calgary’s Anthropology Department is an animated two-field intellectual community driven by faculty and students alike in a quest to understand our contemporary condition. Embracing anthropology’s traditional integrative approach, we consider humans as they are constructed simultaneously by cultural meanings, social structures, and the biology and ecology of the human species in its evolutionary context.
U of C sociocultural anthropologists approach the field through a firm knowledge of the discipline’s history as well as social and cultural theory, gained from both contemporary ethnographic writings and classic anthropological and sociological studies. While ethnography remains the cornerstone of the discipline, multidisciplinary approaches, and especially collaborations, remain crucial to the faculty. Areas of strength include: urban anthropology, political economy and globalization, natural resources and environment, medical anthropology, anthropology and militarization, development, water and food security. Regional expertise encompasses: East Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, Europe, West Africa, the Circumpolar North
University of Kentucky
Faculty with an Interest in Economic Anthropology:
Lisa Cliggett
George Crothers
Scott Hutson
Ann Kingsolver
Sarah Lyon
Kristin Monroe
Carmen Martinez Novo
Chris Pool
Additional Information:
The Department of Anthropology at the University of Kentucky offers multiple graduate courses in economic anthropology with particular strengths in cultural anthropology and archaeology: ANT 637-Socio-Cultural Dimensions of Economic Development, ANT 653-Prehistoric Economics, ANT 734-Economic Anthropology, ANT 770-Political Economy and additional special topics courses that are offered on a rotating basis. Professors Lyon, Pool, and Cliggett have each served on the Society’s board of directors and as program directors of past Society meetings and Lyon is a past recipient of the SEA’s book prize. The department has a strong reputation for research speaking to core debates and discussion in academic, policy, and private spheres. Established in 1927, the department is among the oldest departments of anthropology in the United States. The department has 15 full-time faculty, 2 full time lecturers, and 17 affiliated or adjunct faculty in different programs and colleges around campus. Currently, the program has approximately 100 undergraduate majors and 60 graduate students.
University of Maine
Faculty with an Interest in Economic Anthropology:
Jim Acheson
Christine Beitl
Cindy Isenhour
Lisa Neuman
Darren Ranco
Brian Robinson
Paul “Jim” Roscoe
Dan SandweissGreg Zarro
Additional Information:
The department offers graduate courses in economic anthropology. This new PhD Program centers on understanding human environmental relationships in cross-cultural perspective and their pivotal role in implementing successful environmental policy. The program engages students in a highly multi-disciplinary framework bridging environmental sciences and policy while focusing on the sociocultural impacts of, and responses to, local and global environmental change.
University of South Florida
Faculty with an Interest in Economic Anthropology:
Tara Deubel
Kiran Jayaram
Dillon MahoneyJohn Napora
Christian Wells
Kevin Yelvington
Rebecca Zarger
Additional Information:
The Department offers graduate courses in Economic Anthropology, Anthropology of Development, Global Tourism, and Environmental Anthropology, among others. Faculty research and teaching in economic anthropology emphasize international development, infrastructure, labor, migration, human rights, and human and environmental health. The Graduate Program in Applied Anthropology at USF aims to develop creative scholars and scientists who will apply their knowledge and skills to contemporary human problems, whether as academics or practitioners. The department offers M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Applied Anthropology, as well as a concurrent degree with Public Health (M.P.H.). Initiated in 1974, the University of South Florida was the first in the nation to focus on graduate career training for the practice of applied anthropology, and since then, more than 425 graduates have obtained a degree from our department.
University of Sussex
Faculty with an Interest in Economic Anthropology:
Andrea Cornwall (sex work, development, social and economic justice, Africa, India, Brazil)
Geert De Neve (labor, industry, corporate codes of conduct, India)
Peter Luetchford (fair trade, anthropology of food, Costa Rica, Spain)
Magnus Marsden (trade, traders, migration, Afghanistan)
Filippo Osella (philanthropy, charity, Islam and economy, India and the Gulf)
Rebecca Prentice (garment industry, neoliberalism, health and safety, West Indies)
Dinah Rajak (corporate social responsibility, social enterprise, global political economy, Africa)
Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner (bioeconomies, Japan, China, India)
Additional Information:
At the University of Sussex, our Anthropology department specializes in economic anthropology, especially corporate social responsibility, fair and ethical trade, the politics of labor, neoliberalism, social & economic justice, and the ethics and moralities of capitalist markets. The MA in the Anthropology of Development and Social Transformation is a year-long program (or two years part-time) at the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK. The MA in the Anthropology of Development and Social Transformation is concerned with the anthropological study of the complex economic, political, and cultural processes of social transformation in the developing world. We offer student-centered teaching underpinned by the department’s world-leading research on themes such as development, new social movements, capitalism and the economy, justice, rights, health and sexualities, as well as the inter-relationships between these.
MA in the Social Anthropology of the Global Economy (MA SAGE)
Academic Convenor, Dr Rebecca Prentice: r.j.prentice[at]sussex[dot]ac[dot]uk
The MA in the Social Anthropology of the Global Economy (MA SAGE) helps you develop a critical understanding of the relationship between neoliberal capitalism and social and economic transformation around the world. The course combines theory and anthropological case studies to explore equality and inequality; the politics of labour in the global economy; relationships between wealth, power, and democracy; the global and local impacts of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and social enterprise; and new social movements for social and economic justice (including mass public protests and the Occupy movement).
Key features of the degree:
· A focus on the anthropological study of economic life – one of the most dynamic and fast-growing areas of anthropology;
· Students learn how to analyse and explain the complex relationship between local realities and global processes of economic transformation;
· Student-led teaching underpinned by our Sussex Anthropology’s world-leading research;
· The ability to tailor your degree to your own interests, with courses such as “Fair Trade, Ethical Business & New Moral Economies,” “Poverty, Marginality, and Everyday Lives,” and “Activism for Development and Social Justice.”
· The opportunity to undertake a 12-week work-study placement in an organisation relevant to your degree.
