Katherine E. Hoffman

Katherine E. Hoffman is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Northwestern University, specializing in linguistic, sociocultural, and legal anthropology with a regional focus on North Africa, particularly Morocco. Her work examines the intersection of expressive culture, ethnicity, law, history, and political economy, with particular attention to French colonialism, anti-imperialism, nationalism, and postnationalism.

Her research interests include language and expressive culture, ethnicity and indigenism, language ideologies, language shift and endangerment, law, gender, migration, rural-urban relations, and French colonialism with specific focus on Imazighen (Berbers) in Morocco/North Africa and France. Her fieldwork is conducted in Tashelhit Berber, Moroccan Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic, and French.

Hoffman's scholarly output demonstrates a clear evolution from studies of Berber language and culture in Morocco toward broader examinations of legal pluralism, transnational migration, and Islamic guardianship across North Africa and Europe. Her work consistently bridges linguistic anthropology, legal anthropology, and the anthropology of colonialism with a strong emphasis on gender dynamics.

• American Council of Learned Societies' Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowship
• National Endowment for the Humanities Faculty Fellowship
• National Science Foundation's RAPID program fellowships
• Wenner-Gren Foundation fellowships
• Fulbright-IIE fellowships
• Institute for Advanced Study in Lyon (Collegium) fellowship (2016-2017)

Hoffman has served on editorial boards for the Oxford Bibliographies in Anthropology, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, and American Anthropologist. She has consulted for National Geographic Magazine and authored sections of Fodor's Morocco travel guide. Her applied work includes consulting on rural Moroccan girls' education projects with AMIDEAST and the Moroccan Ministry of Education.