Miriam Kilimo

Dr. Kilimo’s teaching and research interests center on the themes of Black and African feminist politics, law, and governance in contemporary Africa. She draws on interdisciplinary scholarship from Africana Studies, Anthropology, and Women’s and Gender Studies to generate scholarship and develop courses that examine the use of policies and law to address gender and racial inequalities in social and political life. Her work has been published in the academic journals Africa, Anthropology and Humanism and Reproductive Health Matters, as well as media and literary outlets that include The Guardian, Africa Is a Country and Brittle Paper.

•  Introduction to Africana Studies
• Women,Culture and Power in Africa

Articles

2022. ‘You Can’t Do Politics Without Money’: Female Politicians, Matronage, and the Limits of Gender Quotas in Kenya. Africa 92 (2): 210-229

2020 Rebirth. Anthropology and Humanism 45 (1): 88-91

2016 “Female Genital Mutilation in Kenya: are young men allies in social change programmes?” (co-authored with Eleanor Brown, Faith Mwangi-Powell, and Victoria Le May) Reproductive Health Matters 24 (47): 118-125

Chapter

2022. “Redefining the Female Body: The Legislative Process against Female Circumcision in Kenya.” In Gender and Sexuality in Kenyan Societies, edited by Besi Brillian Muhonja and Babacar M’Baye, 75-100. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Public Scholarship

2020. “Beyond the Nobel Peace Prize.” In Africa Is a Country. 2016. “The Black Woman’s Natural Hair.” In Mystiques: a feminist homage to Roland Barthes, edited by Kerrie Thornhill, 12-19. Oxford: The Feminist E-Press, International Gender Studies

• Honorable Mention, Bennetta Jules-Rosette Graduate Essay Award, Association for Africanist Anthropology (AfAA), American Anthropological Association (AAA), 2021
• Preparing Future Faculty Predoctoral Fellowship, James Madison University, 2021
• Social Science Research Council (SSRC) International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF), 2019
• National Science Foundation (NSF) Cultural Anthropology Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (DDRIG), 2019
• Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant, 2019Society of Humanistic Anthropology (SHA) Prize for 1st Place in Ethnographic Fiction and CreativeNonfiction Writing, 2019
• Royal Air Maroc-African Studies Association Student Travel Award, 2018
• The Kristin Mann Award in African Studies, Emory University, 2020
• The George W. Woodruff Fellowship, Emory University, 2016
• Rhodes Scholarship, University of Oxford, 201