Chapurukha M. Kusimba

Chapurukha Makokha Kusimba is a Kenyan–American anthropologist and archaeologist. He is Professor of Anthropology at the University of South Florida. His work looks at the history of East Africa, the Swahili people, the Indian Ocean trade, and the archaeology of slavery and migration.

 Education 
Kusimba studied history and Swahili at Kenyatta University in Kenya, where he got a Bachelor of Education degree in 1986. He later studied anthropology at Bryn Mawr College in the United States, where he received his M.A. in 1989 and Ph.D. in 1993.

 Career 
From 1989 to 1993, Kusimba worked as a research scientist at the National Museums of Kenya. In 1994 he became assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois Chicago and assistant curator of African archaeology and ethnology at the Field Museum of Natural History.

He became associate professor and associate curator in 1999, and later professor and curator in 2005. He stayed at Illinois and the Field Museum until 2013.

Since 2012, Kusimba has served on the Advisory Directors Board of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Since 2015, he has also been a member of the Scientific Committee of the UNESCO Commission on the Slave Route Project.

Between 2013 and 2020, he taught anthropology at American University in Washington, D.C.
In 2020 he joined the University of South Florida as professor of anthropology.

 Research 
Kusimba studies the archaeology of East Africa and the Indian Ocean. His research focuses on trade, global connections, and the role of Swahili societies in these networks.  

He has directed fieldwork in Kenya and worked with the Forbidden City Museum in Beijing, and with researchers in the United States such as David Reich of Harvard Medical School.  

His work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Program, and the National Geographic Society.  

From 1994 to 2013, he was curator of African archaeology and ethnology at the Field Museum of Natural History, where he developed research programs and training for African and African American students.  

His scholarship has helped reinterpret the history of the Swahili coast, highlighting African societies’ role in Indian Ocean trade. He has also written on inequality, slavery, and diaspora in African archaeology.  

 Books 
 2024 – Swahili Worlds in Globalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
 2020 – China and East Africa: Ancient Ties, Contemporary Flows (co-edited with Tiequan Zhu and Purity Kiura). Lanham: Lexington Books.
 2004 – Unwrapping a Little-Known Textile Tradition: The Field Museum’s Madagascar Textile Collection (co-edited with J. Claire Odland and B. Bronson). Los Angeles: Fowler Museum Cultural History Publications.
 2003 – East African Archaeology: Foragers, Potters, Smiths, and Traders (co-edited with S. B. Kusimba). Philadelphia: University Museum of Pennsylvania.
 1999 – The Rise and Fall of Swahili States. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press.

 Honors 

 2025 – Inducted into Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Honor Society
 2024 – Outstanding Research Achievement Award, University of South Florida
 2018 – Elected Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
 2011–2012 – Senior J. W. Fulbright Fellowship to Kenya (Pwani University)
 2002–2003 – J. William Fulbright Teaching Fellowship to the Czech Republic

 References 

Category:Living people
Category:Kenyan scientists
Category:Anthropologists
Category:Archaeologists