Joseph Hill
Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology & Egyptology Department
American University in Cairo
P.O. Box 74
New Cairo 11835, Egypt
Office: (20 2) 2615 1862
Fax: (20 2) 2795 7565
Ph.D. in Anthropology, Yale University, 2007
I am an anthropologist studying religious knowledge and authority, primarily in West African Islamic movements. I am interested in the complex and sometimes paradoxical relationships between religious practices, secularism, modernity, and globalization. Current writing projects look at religious globalization and the production of multiple cosmopolitanisms.
I recently moved to Egypt and had to give up the server I was using, and I haven’t had time to put my site back together, so please bear with me until I get things up and running again. I hope to have more documents and multi-media on line soon about my research.
My current project, drawing on ethnographic work I conducted between 2001 and 2005 in Senegal and Mauritania, focuses on the followers of Ibrahim (“Baay”) Ñas in Senegal, who generally refer to themselves as Taalibe Baay. In 2004, I conducted the principal phase of my dissertation project in Kaolack, Senegal. I am particularly interested in how various kinds of religious education are used in connection with religious authority and building a multi-ethnic and transnational religious community. I’m starting to make contact with the Taaliba Baay community here in Cairo and hope that research in Cairo will give me new insights into the globalization of this movement.