Janet Roitman

Janet Roitman is a Professor at RMIT University's Department of Economics, Finance & Marketing, based at the City Campus in Melbourne, Australia. She is the founder-director of The Platform Economies Research Network (PERN) and an Associate Investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-making and Society (ADM+S). Previously, she held roles as a University Professor at The New School in New York (2007–2022) and Senior Researcher at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique in Paris (1999–2007). Her research focuses on the anthropology of value, digital financial technologies, and the socio-political implications of financial platforms. She advises on Masters and PhD research, including projects like 'Can moving to a cashless society worsen financial inclusion?'

Roitman's work spans studies of African economies, crisis narratives, and the transnational reach of financial systems. Her key publications include Fiscal Disobedience (2018) and Anti-Crisis (2013), examining economic regulation and crisis theory. She serves on editorial boards for journals like Cultural Anthropology and Finance & Society. Her current research explores digital platforms' role in frontier financial ecosystems, with a focus on Sub-Saharan Africa's financial sovereignty challenges.

Her grants include support from the Ford Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and National Science Foundation. Roitman is affiliated with RMIT's Digital Ethnography Research Center (DERC) and contributes to initiatives like the Pan-African Payment & Settlement System (PAPSS). She advocates for equitable financial infrastructures and critiques neocolonial economic dependencies in global banking systems.