Katy LindquistCohort 2018
Education
- BA, Anthropology, Colby College, 2014
Research
My research investigates the role of young, middle-class professionals in helping shape future political landscapes in urban Africa. Since the beginning of the 21st century, popularized development narratives of “Africa Rising” have projected the future of Africa as a neoliberal success story. Much less publicized is the story of “Africa Uprising,” embodied in the recent wave of social justice-oriented popular protest that has engulfed urban landscapes. My research explores these alternative politics of possibility from the vantage point of urban Uganda. Since the 1980s, Uganda has been the site of some of the most expansive neoliberal reforms in Africa as well as recurrent popular protests against those very policies. Through ethnographic research, my dissertation seeks to understand how young professionals in Kampala – Uganda’s capital – negotiate between a future of consumer citizenship and a future of social justice in their everyday lives. I see my research as contributing to scholarship on middle classness in Africa, African youth, the anthropology of the future, and African politics in the wake of neoliberalism.
Advisor: Dr. Knauft
