Peter Geschiere

PETER GESCHIERE is Professor of African Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam (earlier at Leiden University). He was visiting professor at several universities in Africa, North America and Europe. He is fellow of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Sciences of Cameroon. In 2002 the African Studies Association (USA) gave him the award of ‘Distinguished Africanist of the year.' He is board member and chair of the awards jury for the Prince Claus Fund, and co-editor of the journal Ethnography (with SAGE). Since 1971 he undertook historical-anthropological field-work in various parts of Cameroon and elsewhere in West Africa. His publications include The Modernity of Witchcraft: Politics and the Occult in Post-colonial Africa (Virginia UP); Globalization and Identity: Dialectics of Flow and Closure (Blackwell - with Birgit Meyer);The Forging of Nationhood (Manohar - with Gyanendra Pandey); and Perils of Belonging: Autochthony, Citizenship and Exclusion in Africa and Europe (Chicago UP). He has also written numerous essays on various aspects of economy, society, and culture in West Africa. At present he works on a book on Witchcraft, Intimacy and Trust: Africa in Comparison.