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Stephen C. Lubkemann

Associate Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs

Building X 103
2112 G Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20052

Phone: (202) 994-4191
Fax: (202) 994-6097
E-mail: Stephen.Lubkemann@gwu.edu

Education:

Ph.D., Brown University

Expertise:

Southern, Lusophone, and west Africa; Portuguese and African diasporas; gender; political conflict and violence; migration, diasporas, and transnationalism; refugees and displacement; humanitarian action and development; anthropological history; cultural resources.

Background:

Dr. Lubkemann is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and of International Affairs at George Washington University, where he began teaching in 2002.

Dr. Lubkemann received his Ph.D. in 2000, from the Department of Anthropology at Brown University, where he retains an adjunct appointment at the Watson Institute for International Studies. From 2000-2001, he held an Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Population Studies and Training Center at Brown University, where he received advanced training in demographic methods. From 1998-2006, he served as a consultant and researcher with the Humanitarianism and War Project (at Tufts University) where he collaborated in the NGO Policy Dialogue series and contributed to, and co-edited, publications on refugees and humanitarian action. From 1999 to 2001, he served on the first Roundtable on Forced Migration of the National Academy of Science's National Research Council. Dr. Lubkemann is a co-founder of the George Washington Diaspora Program (Elliott School-IGIS) and a member of the Technical Advisory Board of the GW-Africa Center for Health and Human Security.

Dr. Lubkemann has done extensive fieldwork in Mozambique, in South Africa, and with African refugees and diasporas in Europe and the U.S. His ongoing research includes a project initiated in 2004, with research grants from the United States Institute for Peace and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, that examines the political and socio-economic influence of displacement diasporas in their war-torn countries of origin through a specific study of the Liberian case. Since 2006, he has also been engaged in a major project in Angola, supported by the MacArthur Foundation, which examines the effects of "trans-generational displacement" on gendered relations, urbanization, and informal governance systems. In 2007, he initiated a new policy research project with USIP funding that examines customary legal practices in post-conflict Liberia. His work also critically examines the structure and effects of international humanitarian action and explores the potential of diasporas as a "third humanitarian space."

Dr. Lubkemann's most recent book, Culture in Chaos: An Anthropology of the Social Condition in War (University of Chicago Press 2008), critically re-conceptualizes displacement and proposes a new approach to the study of social transformation and political mobilization in war-torn societies. He has also published articles in a number of journals including the Journal of Refugee Studies, the Canadian Journal of African Studies, Anthropological Quarterly, the Journal of Peace Research, and Diaspora, and is the author of numerous book chapters including the chapter on "Refugees" in the award-winning volume World at Risk: A Global Issues Sourcebook (CQ Press, 2002). Since 2005, he has also served as the Associate Editor of the journal Anthropological Quarterly.

Courses Taught:

Anth 151 Development Anthropology
Anth 178 Cultures of Africa
Anth 202 Proseminar: Sociocultural Anthropology
Anth 251 Anthropology of Contemporary Issues: Displacement and Diasporas

Last update: 3/16/2009