Daivi Rodima-Taylor

Dr. Daivi Rodima-Taylor is a social anthropologist and researcher at the African Studies Center of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University. Her research focuses on informal economies, financial technology, infrastructures, migration and diaspora, and land and agrarian relations. Her longitudinal field research in East Africa studied local associations of mutual security such as collaborative work groups, savings-credit associations, and informal courts and militias. She has been leading Boston University interdisciplinary Task Force on migrant remittances and human security, which was one of the very first initiatives to systematically study post-conflict remittances and their role in reconstruction and development. She directs the BU African Studies Center Diaspora Studies Initiative, co-leads the ASC Working Group on Land Mortgage, and is project manager for the National Endowment for the Humanities Ajami Research Project, Readers in Ajami (RIA) Project, and Digital Preservation of Fuuta Jalon Project. Daivi has taught anthropology, international relations, and sustainable development and contributed to international development work. Her recent publications include the co-edited special issue “Ajami Literacies of Africa” that is forthcoming in Islamic Africa (with Fallou Ngom and David Robinson, vol. 14/2 and 15/1), the special issue FinTech in Africa in Journal of Cultural Economy (with Paul Langley, vol. 15/4, 2022), and co-edited book volumes Land and the Mortgage: History, Culture, Belonging (Berghahn Books, 2022) and Cryptopolitics: Exposure, Concealment, and Digital Media (Berghahn Books, 2023). Daivi has co-edited a number of special issues, and published in peer-reviewed journals such as Africa (International African Institute), African Studies Review, Anthropology Today, Islamic Africa, American Anthropologist, Social Analysis, Geoforum, Journal of Cultural Economy, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Global Networks, Migration Information Source, Environment and Planning (Politics and Space), American Ethnologist, Journal of International Relations and Development, Global Policy, JRAI (Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute), Economic Anthropology, Review of International Political Economy, and International Journal of African Historical Studies.