UB Anthropologist Will Be Yip Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Deborah Reed-Danahay, PhD, of Buffalo, professor of anthropology at the University at Buffalo, has been awarded a Yip Fellowship at Magdalene College, Cambridge University, for the 2012 Michaelmas (October to Christmas) term.

She will be in residence at Cambridge during her sabbatical from UB, working on two book manuscripts. One addresses the Vietnamese diaspora and employs memoirs written by Vietnamese refugees in the U.S. and in France.

The second is about French sociologist/ethnologist and public intellectual Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002), whose books included "La Distinction," considered one of 10 most important sociological books of the 20th century. Reed-Danahay already has written a book and several articles dealing with the implications of Bourdieu's work for sociocultural anthropology.

Reed-Danahay' primary specializations are political anthropology and French social theory. She has published studies of rural France, and is interested in national and supranational identities in contemporary Europe.

She recently turned her attention to the citizenship practices of Vietnamese immigrants in the U.S., the subject of her 2012 book, "Civic Engagements: The Citizenship Practices of Indian and Vietnamese Immigrants" (Stanford University Press), coauthored with Caroline Brettell. She has previously published on citizenship in the European Union.

Reed-Danahay taught at the University of Texas, Arlington, and served as chair of the Anthropology Department at Buffalo State College for two years before joining the UB faculty in 2008. She is the director of the Center for European Studies (CEUS) at UB and is the current president of the Society for the Anthropology of Europe.

The Yip Fellowship provides room and board for visiting fellows, who must be nominated by a member of the Magdalene College faculty. Reed-Danahay's nominator is social psychologist and sociologist Brendan Burchell, PhD, senior lecturer in sociology at Cambridge.

Reed-Danahay's UB colleague, Ezra Zubrow, PhD, professor of anthropology and a specialist in GIS and demography, was a Yip Fellow at Magdalene College in 2008 and again in 2010.