Short Bio:

Sibel B. Kusimba is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of South Florida. Her research bridges East African archaeology with the anthropology of money, digital finance, and fintech in the Global South. She is the author of African Foragers (AltaMira, 2003) and Reimagining Money: Kenya in the Digital Finance Revolution (Stanford, 2021) and has published widely on how financial technologies mediate care, gender, and social networks. Kusimba has held research and teaching appointments in the U.S., Kenya, South Africa, and China.

Longer Bio:

Anthropologist Sibel Kusimba has conducted anthropological fieldwork in Kenya on topics ranging from inter-ethnic cooperation, to leadership, to environmental change, to the origins of trade. Since 2012 she has explored the impact of digital money and digital finance in Kenya. Her book Reimagining Money: Kenya in the Digital Finance Revolution explores digital money in Kenya, a leading site for financial technology. The book describes the myriad new uses and practices with digital money, including e-money transfer, digital loans, and crowdfunding. Professor Kusimba’s mobile money research has also been published in the peer-reviewed journals Information Technology in International Development, The Journal of Cultural Economy, African Studies Review, and Economic Anthropology. Her work is also featured in an IMTFI video and a  webinar Wednesday through the American Anthropological Association. She has spoken to The East African,  The Voice of America, and Business Daily Africa about mobile money in Kenya and her research has been featured in Next Billion. Professor Kusimba has garnered numerous grants, including three National Science Foundation Grants, one of which was an REU grant in 2007-2008 to support an NSF undergraduate research site in Kenya; three grants through The Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion (IMTFI) in 2012, 2014, and 2015; and two year-long Fulbright appointments through the US Department of State to Kenya.  Her book African Foragers was named an outstanding academic book by the American Library Association.