Amy Stambach

Ph.D., University of Chicago

Links

Amy Stambach CV

Areas of Focus

Sociocultural Anthropology, International Development Policy, South Africa, Tanzania, United States, Inclusive Growth and Partnerships, Religion, Education, and the Environment

Affiliations

Research Associate, Smithsonian Institution

International Affairs Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations

African Studies Program, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Research

Professor Stambach is a cultural anthropologist whose research examines the production and mobilization of environmental knowledge. Her anthropological work began with studying Tanzanian education programs designed to build a post-colonial and post-socialist national citizenry. That work led to her interest in U.S. evangelical religious groups’ involvement in providing education to students in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda and, more recently, to the study of China-Africa educational programs as seen from the perspectives of Tanzanian, Kenyan, and Rwandan university students and higher education professionals.

With funding from the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, National Geographic, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Provost’s Office, Prof. Stambach is currently studying the social, political, and economic contexts shaping diverse understandings of the environment, health, and climate change. She uses the UN Sustainability Development Goals, governmental and vernacular archives, and ethnographic field research as points of entry into a comparative study of U.S. private sector investments in education, agriculture, health, and real estate in South Africa and Tanzania. The ultimate goal of her work is to leverage anthropological knowledge to gain insight into problems facing U.S. and international institutions and local communities.

Teaching

In addition to introductory and theoretical approaches to social-cultural anthropology, Professor Stambach teaches classes on economic anthropology, the environment and sustainability, education and policy, religion, and museum anthropology.

Selected Publications

• Inequalities in the Cape Flats: Principals’ Perspectives on Children’s Schooling, by Desire Christian and Amy E. Stambach. South African Journal of Childhood Education 14(1), a1527. https://doi.org/10.4v.
• ‘The Manner of My Going’: Death and Life beyond the Anthropocene in Michael Swai’s Poetry.” Postcolonial Text. https://www.postcolonial.org/index.php/pct/issue/view/96
• Sourcing and Shipping Museum Objects from East Africa to the Smithsonian, 1887-1891. Business History 65(5): 848-62. https://doi.org/10.1080/00076791.2019.1687687

• The World Bank’s Construction of Teachers and Their Work: A Critical Analysis, by Joseph Pesambili, Yusuf Sayed, and Amy Stambach. International Journal of Educational Development. Volume 92: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2022.102609.
•  Chinese-Tanzanian Friendship and Friendship Treaties. Peace Review 34(3): 292-302 [reprinted 2023 in Friendship, Peace and Social Justice, edited by Heather Devere (New York: Routledge, Chapter 4)]. https://doi.org/10.1080/10402659.2022.2080498
• Witness to a Passing, by Amy E. Stambach and Aikande C. Kwayu. HAU: The Journal of Ethnographic Theory 11(2): 412-417.
  https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/716216

• In the Interest of Peace, the Society Yielded. In Global Perspectives on Missionary Work in the 19th Century, edited by Geoff Troughton. Leiden: Brill.

• Introduction to Anthropological Perspectives on Student Futures, edited by Amy E. Stambach and Kathleen D. Hall. New York: Palgrave.
• Development Organizations’ Support for Faith-based Education: The Turn Toward Ethics and Dialogue. The Routledge Handbook of Religions and Development. Emma Tomalin, ed. New York: Routledge.