2023 Metcalf Award Recipient: Joanna Davidson

Joanna Davidson is an associate professor of anthropology at Boston University’s College of Arts & Sciences and associate director of Kilachand Honors College. Since joining BU in 2011, she has taught an array of anthropology and interdisciplinary courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. She has also supervised numerous PhD students and mentored many postdoctoral fellows. According to Professor Davidson, anthropology cultivates more nuanced, imaginative, and empathic orientations to the world. Her first-year seminar, The Power, Politics, and Ethics of Storytelling, is one of the most highly rated at Kilachand.

Professor Davidson describes her teaching style as “intellectually demanding and individually empowering.” Her students call it “illuminating,” “transformative,” and “contagious.” 

Concerned that conventional grading discourages intellectual risk-taking, Professor Davidson proposed a strategy that emphasizes dialogue and student reflection. She has implemented alternative grading approaches in all her courses and has worked to spread these methods across the honors college and BU.

A sociocultural anthropologist, Professor Davidson has conducted ethnographic research in Guinea-Bissau since 1999, where she has focused on rural West Africans’ responses to environmental, economic, and religious change. She is the author of Sacred Rice: An Ethnography of Identity, Environment, and Development in Rural West Africa and coeditor of Opting Out: Women Messing with Marriage around the World. She has authored numerous peer-reviewed articles and book chapters.

Professor Davidson earned a BA, with honors, in anthropology and feminist studies from Stanford University, and her MA and PhD in anthropology from Emory University. Prior to becoming an academic anthropologist, she worked with nongovernmental organizations in Africa and Latin America on issues such as refugee resettlement, indigenous rights, rural development, and social entrepreneurship.