His book The War-Machines: Young Men and Violence in Sierra Leone and Liberia (Duke University Press, 2011), an ethnography of militia movements in West Africa's Mano River War, won the annual Anthony Leeds Prize for the best book in urban anthropology. His forthcoming book, Monrovia Modern (Duke University Press, 2017) explores the way urban residents inhabit the post-war built environment of Liberia's capital city. A former photojournalist covering conflicts across Africa and the Balkans, Hoffman works with text, still images and film to produce ethnographies that focus on the intersection of violence, labor and built form in contemporary West Africa.