Deborah Fahy Bryceson

NAI Associate

ORCID ID:

0000-0002-2136-0078

www.bryceson.net External link, opens in new window.

Extraordinary Professor Deborah Fahy Bryceson is a well-known Africanist scholar and consultant, oft-cited for her pioneering work on African sectoral change and the concepts of ‘de-agrarianization’ and ‘transnational families’. She has published 16 books and over 130 journal articles and book chapters, specializing on livelihood, labor urbanization and agrarian studies.

Deborah’s academic career began as a researcher at the Bureau of Resource Assessment and Land Use Planning at the University of Dar es Salaam (1976-1981), going on to become a Senior Research Fellow at the Afrika-studiecentrum, University of Leiden (1992-2005) and the University of Glasgow (2009-2013). She also lectured at the Architectural Association, London and the University of Birmingham and is currently Honorary Fellow and Professor at the Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh. She has delivered keynote addresses around the world, notably Fukui Japan, Oxford, Utrecht, New Delhi, Edinburgh, Canberra Australia, Bologna and Alanya Turkey.

She has served as a Research Consultant for numerous UN agencies over the years, including UNICEF, ILO, UNCTAD, UNU, FAO and the World Bank, as well as for the Tanzanian Government, the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the British Department of International Development, DANIDA and CARE International.

She has published 16 books and edited collections and over 130 journal articles and book chapters. Her region of specialization is East Africa, however, in her research grant work she has specialized in pan-African comparative research and led country case study research teams spanning East, West and Southern Africa.

Her three main subject areas are:

Livelihood, labour, mobility and settlement in processes of transition – notably urbanisation in developing countries, urban economies, urban growth and mobility patterns of the poor, occupational change and deagrarianisation.
Social dynamics and institutions – including the changing nature of the family, transnational families, creole societies, social networks, drinking patterns, work cultures, age and gender differentiation, women's employment patterns and participatory research methodology.
Agrarian studies - rural social and economic development, notably: food marketing, agricultural policy, famine prevention and rehabilitation, urban food supply constraints, rural transport, the impact of public investment on rural welfare, and the impact of HIV/AIDS on famine-prone rural African communities.

Themes:

Natural Resources & Environment

‘Mining Mobility and Settlement during an East African Gold Boom: Seeking Fortune and Accommodating Fate’ 2020. Mobilities 15(2) (D.F. Bryceson, J.B.Jønsson and M.Shand)

‘Getting Grounded? Miners’ Migration, Housing and Urban Settlement in Tanzania, 1980-2012’. 2019. Extractive Industries and Society 6: 948-959 (J.B. Jønsson, D.F. Bryceson, C. Kinabo and M. Shand)

‘Precarity in Angolan Diamond Mining Towns, 1920-2014: Tracing Agency of the State, Mining Companies and Urban Households’ 2018. Journal of Modern African Studies 56(1), 113-141. (with C.U. Rodrigues). https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022278X17000507 External link, opens in new window.

‘Beyond the Artisanal Mining Site: Migration, Housing Capital Accumulation and Indirect Urbanization in Tanzania, 2017. Journal of East African Studies 11(1), 3-23 (with J.B. Jønsson)

‘Artisanal Frontier Mining of Gold in Africa: Labour Transformation in Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo’, 2016. (with S. Geenen) African Affairs, 115(459): 296-317.

Mining and Social Transformation in Africa: Tracing Mineralizing and Democratizing Trends in Artisanal Production. 2014. London: Routledge Development Studies series (edited by D.F. Bryceson, J.B. Jønsson, E. Fisher and R. Mwaipopo), 217

‘For Richer, For Poorer: Marriage and Casualized Sex in East African Artisanal Gold Mining Settlements’, 2014. Development and Change 45(1), 79-104. (with J.B. Jønsson & H. Verbrugge)

Mining and African Urbanisation: Population, Settlement and Welfare Trajectories. 2013. London: Routledge, 232 pp. (edited by Deborah Fahy Bryceson and Danny MacKinnon). ISBN: 9780415826259.

‘Prostitution or Partnership? Wifestyles in Tanzanian Artisanal Gold-mining Settlements’, 2013. Journal of Modern African Studies 51(1), 33-56 (with J.B. Jønsson & H.Verbrugge).

‘Eureka and Beyond: Mining’s Impact on African Urbanisation’, 2012. (with D. MacKinnon), 513-27.

‘Unearthing Treasure and Trouble: Mining as an Impetus to Urbanisation in Tanzania’, 2012. 631-49. (with J.B. Jønsson, C. Kinabo & M. Shand).

in Journal of Contemporary African Studies, October 2012, Special Issue edited by Bryceson, D.F. and D. Mackinnon, Mining and Urbanisation in Africa: Population, Settlement and Welfare, 190 pp.

‘Birth of a Market Town in Tanzania: Towards Narrative Studies of Urban Africa’, 2011. Journal of Eastern African Studies 5(2), 274-293, h

‘Miners’ Magic: Artisanal Mining, the Albino Fetish and Murder in Tanzania’, 2010. Journal of Modern African Studies 48(3), 353-82. http://doi.org/10.1017/S0022278X10000303 External link, opens in new window. (with J.B. Jønsson & R. Sherrington).

‘Gold Digging Careers in Rural Africa: Small-Scale Miners’ Livelihood Choices’, 2010. World Development 38(3), 379-92.

Migration

Transnational Families in Global Migration: Navigating Economic Development and Family Life Cycles across Blurred and Brittle Borders. 2019. Special Issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 45(16), (edited by Deborah Fahy Bryceson).

ISSN:1369-183X (print), 1469-9451 (online)

‘Transnational families negotiating migration and care life cycles across nation-state borders’ in Bryceson, D.F. (2019). Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 45(16), 3042-3064.

Rural

‘Gender and Generational Patterns of African Deagrarianization: Evolving Labor and Land Allocation in Smallholder Peasant Household Farming, 1980-2015’. 2019. World Development 113: 60-72.

‘Sub-Saharan Africa’s Vanishing Peasantries and the Specter of a Global Food Crisis’, 2009. Monthly Review. July-August, 48-62.

Urban

‘Precarity in Angolan Diamond Mining Towns, 1920-2014: Tracing Agency of the State, Mining Companies and Urban Households’ 2018. Journal of Modern African Studies 56(1), 113-141. (with C.U. Rodrigues).

‘Getting Grounded? Miners’ Migration, Housing and Urban Settlement in Tanzania, 1980-2012’. 2018. Extractive Industries and Society 6: 948-959 (J.B. Jønsson, D.F. Bryceson, C. Kinabo and M. Shand)