Kelly M Askew
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BIO
Kelly Askew is the Niara Sudarkasa Collegiate Professor of Anthropology and Afroamerican & African Studies. She has worked for over three decades in Tanzania and Kenya and is author of Performing the Nation: Swahili Music and Cultural Politics in Tanzania (University of Chicago Press, 2002). Current research and publications focus on rural water and energy access, land tenure and property rights, African postsocialism, poetic and performing arts, pastoralism, and Indigenous political movements. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, Wenner-Gren Foundation, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Royal Danish Embassy of Tanzania, School of Advanced Research (SAR), and the Berlin Institute for Advanced Studies (Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin). Askew is also an award-winning documentary filmmaker. Recent film projects include: Maasai Remix (Villon Films, 2019), Best Feature-Length Documentary Film, 2020 Festival International du Film Panafricain de Cannes, France; Poetry in Motion: 100 Years of Zanzibar’s Nadi Ikhwan Safaa (Buda Musique, 2012); and The Chairman and the Lions (Documentary Educational Resources, 2013), 1st place, 2013 ETNOFilm Festival, Croatia.
- Howard Stein, Kelly M Askew, Shyamala Nagaraj, Rie Odgaard, Faustin Maganga. 2025. Assessing Poverty Interventions: Conceptual, Methodological and Empirical Perspectives Relating to Property Rights Formalization in Rural Tanzania. Modern Economy 16(2):251-270.
- Kelly M Askew, Maganga, Faustin , Odgaard, Rie , Stein, Howard. 2025. Dispossession through Formalization. Asian Journal of African Studies (40):3-49.
- Kelly M Askew, Rie Odgaard. 2019. Deeds and Misdeeds: Land Titling and Women’s Rights in Tanzania. New Left Review II(118):68-85.
- Kelly M Askew, Bluwstein, Jevgeniy , Lund, Jens Friis, Stein, Howard , Noe, Christine , Odgaard, Rie , Maganga, Faustin , Engström, Linda . 2018. Between dependence and deprivation: The interlocking nature of land alienation in Tanzania. Journal of Agrarian Change 18(4):806-830.
- Askew, Kelly M. 2017. Building a peaceful Nation: Julius Nyerere and the establishment of sovereignty in Tanzania, 1960-1964. Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des etudes africaines 51(1):168-170.
- Kelly M Askew, Stein, Howard , Maganga, Faustin P, Odgaard, Rie , Cunningham, Sam . 2016. The Formal Divide: Customary Rights and the Allocation of Credit to Agriculture in Tanzania. Journal of Development Studies 52(9):1306-1319.
- Agrawal, Arun, Askew, Kelly M, Golrokhian, Arman , Browne, Katherine , Hardin, Rebecca , Beny, Laura , Larroquette, Benjamin , Morse, Benjamin . 2016. A National Adaptation Programme of Action: Ethiopia's responses to climate change. World Development Perspectives 1:53-57.
- Askew, Kelly M. 2015. 'Eat squid not fish': poetics, aesthetics, and HIV/AIDS in Tanzania. Journal of African Cultural Studies 27(3):255-276.
- Kelly M Askew. 2014. Tanzanian newspaper poetry: political commentary in verse. Journal of Eastern African Studies 8(3):515-537.
- Kelly M Askew, Maganga, Faustin , Odgaard, Rie . 2013. Of Land and Legitimacy: A Tale of Two Lawsuits. Africa 83(1):120-141.
