Meghan Ference

Meghan Ference is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, within the School of Natural and Behavioral Sciences. She teaches courses such as Culture and Society, Urban & Transnational Anthropology, Economic Anthropology, and Anthropological Theory. Ference serves as the undergraduate major advisor for the Anthropology Department.

Education:

• B.A. in Anthropology and Africana Studies from Rutgers University (2005)
• M.A. in Cultural Anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis (2010)
• Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis (2013)

Her research examines the evolving nature of work in urban Africa, particularly how transportation technology reshapes labor practices in Nairobi, Kenya. Ference conducted 32 months of ethnographic fieldwork on Nairobi’s urban transportation sector for her dissertation, Moving Targets: Meanings of Mobility in Metropolitan Nairobi. She is currently writing a manuscript on transportation technology’s impact on work and has published on topics like the 'hustle economy,' linguistic diversity in Africa, and political change in Kenya.

Notable contributions include co-authored papers in The Kenya Political Reader and Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, as well as presentations at the European Conference of African Studies and workshops at the British Institute for East African Studies. Ference’s work bridges ethnographic study, political economy, and urban infrastructure analysis.