I am a social anthropologist who studies obligations, rights, and justice in their vernacular forms. This has involved field and archival research in various religious, economic, legal, and political contexts in Africa as well as on African-European relations. A key thread running through my work has been the question of what might be learned about apparently universal issues such as human rights, freedom, obligation, and equality if approached from the perspectives of ordinary people rather than those of canonical texts and thinkers. It has been based on a decades-long commitment to work through an African language (Chichewa / Chinyanja).

I was awarded a PhD in social anthropology by the University of Manchester in 1995 and held research fellowships at the Nordic Africa Institute and the Academy of Finland before joining the University of Cambridge and Churchill College in 2004. I served as the Director of the University’s Centre of African Studies in 2013-17 and was elected into the British Academy in 2019.

https://www.socanth.cam.ac.uk/directory/professor-harri-englund