Peter Little

Peter Little is a Professor of Anthropology at Emory University and Director of the Emory Program in Development Studies. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. degrees from Indiana University and B.A. from Tulane University. During the past 30 years, Dr. Little has taught and engaged in research on social and agrarian change, political economy and ecology, pastoralism, international development and policy, and food security in several African countries, but with primary emphasis on East Africa. He has been a Visiting Professor, African Studies Centre, Kyoto University, a Visiting Scholar, Centre for African Studies, Oxford University, and a Visiting Research Associate at the Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi and has collaborated on research programs with several other universities around the world, including several in Africa. Dr. Little also has served on the National Review Committee for Sub-Saharan Africa, Fulbright Scholar Program (1996-1998), US Science Liaison Committee, African committee for the Social Science Research Council (1991-1995), African Dissertation Program of the Rockefeller Foundation (1997-1999), and has been a consultant and advisor to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Bank, Rockefeller Foundation, International Institute for Environment and Development (England), Department for International Development (DfID), the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment, OXFAM-America, and several other agencies and foundations. During his career, he has received numerous awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Choice book award, the Amaury Talbot Prize for the best book on African anthropology (Royal Anthropological Institute), and the Albert D. and Elizabeth H. Kirwan Memorial Prize for outstanding contribution to original research at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Little has published more than 100 journal articles, book chapters and research papers, and ten books, including Economic and Political Reform in Africa: Anthropological Perspectives (2014); Somalia: Economy Without State (2003); The Elusive Granary: Herder, Farmer, and State in Northern Kenya (2009/1992); and Living Under Contract: Contract Farming and Agrarian Transformation in Sub-Saharan Africa (1994, co-edited with Michael Watts).