BIO

Emily Williamson Ibrahim is an assistant professor in the department of anthropology at Kenyon College. Her current research focuses on a creative form of communication called "folded speech" in the Hausa language that offer a lens through which to understand how people manage intersubjective uncertainty among “zongos,” the name used to describe predominantly Muslim urban settlements in Ghana, West Africa. Emily holds a PhD in anthropology from Boston University (BU), a Master of Science in Architectural Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Virginia (UVA), and an undergraduate degree in Art History from Colby College. Emily has also worked as an architect in Washington, DC, collaborated on cultural heritage projects in Ghana, Peru, and Haiti, has taught anthropology at Brandeis University, landscape architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and is a co-founder of the nonprofit organization called the "Zongo Story Project" in which she works with students in Ghana to write, illustrate, and tell stories that are meaningful to them. In 2016, their book “Gizo-Gizo: A Tale from the Zongo Lagoon”won the African Studies Association’s Africana Book Award for the best children’s book.

A few of Emily’s publications include: a Review of Swahili Port Cities: The Architecture of Elsewhere, by Prita Meier (H-AMCA: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, 2017); “Understanding the Zongo: socio-spatial processes of marginalization in Ghana.” (The African Metropolis edited by Toyin Falola and Bisola Falola, 2017), “Gizo-Gizo: A Tale from the Zongo Lagoon,” and “Zongo: Water Infrastructure and Public Life” (University of Chicago Art Journal, 2010).