Professor Harri Englund FBA

Biography

I am a social anthropologist who studies obligations, rights and justice in their vernacular forms. This has involved field and archival research in various religious, economic, legal, and political contexts in Africa as well as on African-European relations. I was awarded a PhD in social anthropology by the University of Manchester in 1995 and held research fellowships at the Nordic Africa Institute and the Academy of Finland before joining the University of Cambridge in 2004. I served as the Director of the University’s Centre of African Studies in 2013-17 and was elected into the British Academy in 2019.

Research

I began my research in Africa in the early 1990s when a wave of democratisation swept across the continent. This formative period sparked my enduring interest in topics such as liberal reformism, democracy, human rights, moral obligation, freedom, and equality. Studying these topics in their vernacular forms has involved fieldwork with refugees, smallholder farmers, human rights activists, slum dwellers, local politicians, Pentecostal Christians, radio journalists, and spoken-word poets. A key thread running through my work with these diverse people has been the question of what might be learned about apparently universal issues such as human rights, freedom, obligation, and equality if approached from their perspectives rather than those of canonical texts and thinkers. It has been based on a decades-long commitment to work through an African language (Chichewa / Chinyanja).

In recent years, I have increasingly turned my attention to history in pursuit of related themes. A Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship proved a catalyst by enabling me to immerse in archival work. The bulk of that project concerned the linguistic, spiritual, and humanitarian work done by nineteenth-century Scottish missionaries in present-day Malawi. A central finding was the vision for racial equality that David Clement Scott was developing at a time when the British colonial occupation and Cecil Rhodes’s commercial interests were taking the region to another direction entirely. My intent is to continue researching such little-known figures in colonial and imperial history and their perspectives on race relations and humanity. I am currently developing a project on encounters between Finns and Africans at the turn of the twentieth century.

I am a co-editor of the International African Library, a book series published by Cambridge University Press for the International African Institute.

Research interests

Central and Southern Africa; Northern Europe; colonialism, humanitarianism and human rights; African-language political and moral thought; mass mediation, radio and voice; historical anthropology; biography; political and moral economy.

Publications

Authored books

2025 Kongosta Sortavalaan - esseitä suomalais-afrikkalaisesta historiasta. Tampere: Vastapaino.

2022 Visions for Racial Equality: David Clement Scott and the Struggle for Justice in Nineteenth-Century Malawi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

2018 Gogo Breeze: Zambia’s Radio Elder and the Voices of Free Speech. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

2011 Human Rights and African Airwaves: Mediating Equality on the Chichewa Radio. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

2006 Prisoners of Freedom: Human Rights and the African Poor. Berkeley: University of California Press.

2002 From War to Peace on the Mozambique-Malawi Borderland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press for the International African Institute.

Edited works

2011 Christianity and Public Culture in Africa. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.

2004 Rights and the Politics of Recognition in Africa (with Francis B. Nyamnjoh). London: Zed Books.

2002 A Democracy of Chameleons: Politics and Culture in the New Malawi. Uppsala: The Nordic Africa Institute.

2002 Special Issue on Malawi (with Deborah Potts and John McCracken). Journal of Southern African Studies 28(1).

Articles

2024 African Languages and Untranslatables: Reflections on “Decolonial Knowledge”. Africa (Rome), 6(1), 135-150.

2021 Love and Homophobia in Malawi’s Spoken-Word Poetry Movement. Africa, 91(3), 361-387.

2018 The Front Line of Free Speech: Beyond Parrhêsiain Finland’s Migrant Debate. American Ethnologist, 45(1), 100-111.

2015 Forget the Poor: Radio Kinship and Exploited Labor in Zambia. Current Anthropology, 56 (Supplement 11), S137-S145.

2015 Multivocal Morality: Narrative, Sentiment, and Zambia’s Radio Grandfathers. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 5(2), 251-273.

2015 Anti Anti-Colonialism: Vernacular Press and Emergent Possibilities in Colonial Zambia. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 57(1), 221-247.

2013 The Place of Theory: Rights, Networks, and Ethnographic Comparison (with Thomas Yarrow). Social Analysis, 57(3), 132-149.

2013 Zambia at 50: The Rediscovery of Liberalism. Africa, 83(4), 670-689.

2011 The Snowball State and the Perils of Oblivion. Cambridge Anthropology, 29, 30-34.

2008 Extreme Poverty and Existential Obligations: Beyond Morality in the Anthropology of Africa? Social Analysis, 52(3), 33-50.

2007 Witchcraft and the Limits of Mass Mediation in Malawi. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 13(2), 295-311.

2007 Pentecostalism beyond Belief: Trust and Democracy in a Malawian Township. Africa, 77(4), 477-499.

2005 Universal Africa. CODESRIA Bulletin, 3&4, 11.

2004 Gender Relations in African Language Literature: Interpretative Politics and Possibilities. African Sociological Review 8(1), 154-175.

2004 Cosmopolitanism and the Devil in Malawi. Ethnos, 69(3), 293-316.

2004 Towards a Critique of Rights Talk in New Democracies: The Case of Legal Aid in Malawi. Discourse & Society 15(5), 527-551.

2003 Christian Independency and Global Membership: Pentecostal Extraversions in Malawi. Journal of Religion in Africa, 33(1), 83-111.

2002 Ethnography after Globalism: Migration and Emplacement in Malawi. American Ethnologist, 29(2), 261-286.

2002 The Village in the City, the City in the Village: Migrants in Lilongwe. Journal of Southern African Studies, 28(1), 135-152.

2001 Chinyanja and the Language of Rights. Nordic Journal of African Studies, 10(3), 299-319.

2000 The Dead Hand of Human Rights: Contrasting Christianities in Post-Transition Malawi. Journal of Modern African Studies, 38(4), 579-603.

2000 Ethnography and the Meta-Narratives of Modernity (with James Leach). Current Anthropology, 41(2), 225-248.

2000 (Wo)man in War. Antropologiska Studier, 66-67, 61-73.

1999 The Self in Self-Interest: Land, Labour and Temporalities in Malawi’s Agrarian Change. Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, 69(1), 139-159.

1998 Death, Trauma and Ritual: Mozambican Refugees in Malawi. Social Science and Medicine, 46(9), 1165-1174.

1998 Culture, Environment and the Enemies of Complexity. Review of African Political Economy, 25(76), 179-188.

1996 Witchcraft, Modernity and the Person: The Morality of Accumulation in Central Malawi. Critique of Anthropology, 16(3), 257-279.

1996 Waiting for the Portuguese: Nostalgia, Exploitation and the Meaning of Land in the Malawi-Mozambique Borderland. Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 14(2), 157-172.

Book chapters

2025 Expansive Languages in Nineteenth-Century Central Africa: Missionary Dictionaries between Command and Dialogue. In S. Newell and K. Barber (eds) African Literature in Transition: Print Cultures and African Literature, 1860-1960, 59-76. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

2025 The People's Radio between Populism and Bullshit. In M. Candea, T. Fedirko, P. Heywood and F. Wright (eds) Freedoms of Speech: Anthropological Perspectives on Language, Ethics, and Power, 225-238. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

2018 From the Extended-Case Method to Multi-Sited Ethnography (and Back). In M. Candea (ed.) Schools and Styles of Anthropological Theory, 121-133. London and New York: Routledge.

2012 Poverty. In D. Fassin (ed.) A Companion to Moral Anthropology, 283-302. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.

2012 Cutting Human Rights Down to Size. In M. Goodale (ed.) Human Rights at the Crossroads, 198-209. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

2012 Human Rights and Village Headmen in Malawi: Translation beyond Vernacularization. In J. Eckert, B. Donahoe, C. Strümpell and Z. Özlem Biner (eds) Law against the State: Ethnographic Forays into Law’s Transformations, 70-93. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

2011 The Anthropologist and His Poor. In E. Bornstein and P. Redfield (eds) Forces of Compassion: Humanitarianism between Ethics and Politics, 71-93. Santa Fe, NM: SAR Press.

2011 Rethinking African Christianities: Beyond the Religion-Politics Conundrum. In H. Englund (ed.) Christianity and Public Culture in Africa, 1-24. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.

2011 From Spiritual Warfare to Spiritual Kinship: Islamophobia and Evangelical Radio in Malawi. In H. Englund (ed.) Christianity and Public Culture in Africa, 167-188. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.

2008 Human Rights and Moral Panics: Listening to Popular Grievances. In M. Goodale (ed.) The Anthropology of Human Rights: A Reader, 246-264. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. (Reprint of Chapter 7 in Prisoners of Freedom: Human Rights and the African Poor)

2006 Transnational Governance and the Pacification of Youth: Civic Education and Disempowerment in Malawi. In B. Beckman and G. Adeoti (eds) Intellectuals and African Development: Pretension and Resistance in African Politics , 124-155. London: Zed Books.

2005 Conflicts in Context: Political Violence and Anthropological Puzzles. In V. Broch-Due (ed.), Violence and Belonging: The Quest for Identity in Postcolonial Africa, 60-74. London: Routledge.

2004 Recognizing Identities, Imagining Alternatives. In H. Englund & F.B. Nyamnjoh (eds) Rights and the Politics of Recognition in Africa, 1-29. London: Zed Books.

2002 The Culture of Chameleon Politics. In H. Englund (ed.), A Democracy of Chameleons: Politics and Culture in the New Malawi, 11-24. Uppsala: The Nordic Africa Institute.

2001 The Quest for Missionaries: Transnationalism and Township Pentecostalism in Malawi. In A. Corten and R. Marshall-Fratani (eds), Between Babel and Pentecost: Transnational Pentecostalism in Africa and Latin America, 235-255. London: Hurst & Co.

2001 Winning Elections, Losing Legitimacy: Multipartyism and the Neopatrimonial State in Malawi. In M. Cowen and L. Laakso (eds), Multiparty Elections in Africa, 172-186. Oxford: James Currey.

2001 The Politics of Multiple Identities: The Making of a Home Villagers’ Association in Lilongwe, Malawi. In A. Tostensen, I. Tvedt and M. Vaa (eds), Associational Life in African Cities: Popular Responses to the Urban Crisis, 90-106. Uppsala: The Nordic Africa Institute.

1996 Between God and Kamuzu: The Transition to Multiparty Politics in Central Malawi. In R. Werbner and T. Ranger (eds), Postcolonial Identities in Africa, 107-135. London: Zed Books.