Deborah James

Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics. I am a specialist in the anthropology of South and Southern Africa, where much of my fieldwork has been conducted in Mpumalanga and Northern Provinces and their urban hinterland, the Witwatersrand. My work is broadly political and economic in focus.

My prizewinning book Money from Nothing: Indebtedness and Aspiration in South Africa explores the dynamics surrounding South Africa's national project of financial inclusion—dubbed "banking the unbanked"—which aimed to extend credit to black South Africans as a critical aspect of abolishing apartheid’s legacy