Jean Comaroff

Who is Jean Comaroff?

Jean Comaroff is Professor of African and African American Studies and of Anthropology, Oppenheimer Fellow in African Studies at Harvard University. She is an expert on the effects of colonialism on people in Southern Africa. Until 2012, Jean was the Bernard E. & Ellen C. Sunny Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology and of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago and Honorary Professor of Anthropology at the University of Cape Town.

She received her B.A. in 1966 from the University of Cape Town and her Ph.D. in 1974 from London School of Economics. She has been a University faculty member since 1978.

In collaboration with her husband John Comaroff, as well as on her own, Comaroff has written extensively on colonialism,and hegemony based on fieldwork conducted in southern Africa and Great Britain.

Comaroff also serves as a member of the Editorial Collective of the journal Public Culture.