Marloes Janson

Marloes Janson is Professor of West African Anthropology and Interim Head of the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at SOAS University of London. She holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Leiden University, The Netherlands. Her research interests are at the intersection of anthropology and religion. West Africa (the Gambia and Nigeria) is her ethnographic area of specialization. Her research focuses on new religious movements in Lagos, Nigeria, which mix Islam, Christianity, and Yoruba religion. Her publications include Islam, Youth, and Modernity in the Gambia: The Tablighi Jamaʻat (Cambridge University Press/International African Institute, 2013), which has been awarded the RAI Amaury Talbot Prize for African Anthropology 2014, a special issue of Africa (2016) co-edited with Birgit Meyer, entitled ‘Studying Islam and Christianity in Africa: Moving Beyond a Bifurcated Field’, and Crossing Religious Boundaries: Islam, Christianity, and ‘Yoruba Religion’ in Lagos, Nigeria (Cambridge University Press/International African Institute, 2021). She curated the exhibition The Spiritual Highway: Religious World Making in Megacity Lagos, featuring photographs by the Nigerian award-winning photographer Akintunde Akinleye.