Deborah James

Deborah James, (born 1954) is a South African anthropologist and academic, who specialises in South Africa, economic anthropology, political anthropology, and ethnography.

Since 2008, she has been Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics in England.

Career She was previously an academic at the South African Institute of Race Relations, the University of the Witwatersrand, and the University of KwaZulu-Natal, all in South Africa. She was born in South Africa, grew up under apartheid, and was educated at the University of the Witwatersrand. In 2016, she was awarded the inaugural Fage and Oliver Prize by the African Studies Association of the United Kingdom for her book Money from Nothing: indebtedness and aspiration in South Africa (2015). In 2018, she was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. In 2019, she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.

Books