Louise Lennihan

Louise Lennihan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY), where she has been a faculty member since 1982. She has also been part of the Graduate Center doctoral faculty at CUNY since 1987 and served in administrative roles including Executive Officer of the Ph.D. Program in Anthropology (1997–2008), Associate Provost, Dean for Humanities and Social Sciences, and Interim Provost.

• Education: PhD in Anthropology from Columbia University (1982)

Her research focuses on the political economy of agrarian societies, historical anthropology, and development in Africa. She conducted archival and fieldwork in northern Nigeria, examining the agrarian labor history of Zaria Emirate from colonial rule to the post-oil boom era, emphasizing themes of impoverishment and dispossession. She has published in journals such as the Journal of Peasant Studies, Slavery and Abolition, and Human Ecology, as well as the edited volume Golden Ages and Dark Ages: Imagining the Past in History and Anthropology.

Lennihan has secured grants from the Social Science Research Council, National Science Foundation, NIMH, and Fulbright-Hays to support her research. While her publications highlight methodological and theoretical contributions to African agrarian studies, the specific trends in her recent work remain unlisted in the provided text.

Her administrative leadership roles at both Hunter College and the Graduate Center underscore her institutional impact. Though her teaching and mentoring activities are not explicitly detailed, her grants and interdisciplinary collaborations suggest a sustained engagement with academic mentorship and policy-relevant research.