Naomi Haynes

Naomi Haynes received her PhD in 2012 from the University of California, San Diego and is currently Senior Lecturer and Chancellor’s Fellow in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh.  Her research interests include the anthropology of Christianity, political economy, exchange, value, and theology.  Her first monograph, Moving by the Spirit, explores the social life of Pentecostal congregations on the Zambia Copperbelt, paying special attention to the opportunities and struggles associated with spiritual patronage.  Haynes is currently completing her second monograph, Africa’s Chosen Nation, which brings together political philosophy, media studies, and ethnography to explore Zambia’s constitutional declaration that it is a “Christian nation.”

Recent publications

2021.  Concretizing the Christian Nation: Negotiating Zambia’s National House of Prayer. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East.  41(2): 166-174.

2020.  The Expansive Present: A New Model of Christian Time.  Current Anthropology 61(1): 57-76.

2018.  Hierarchy and Value: Ethnographic and Theoretical Perspectives.  (co-edited with Jason Hickel).  Oxford: Berghan Books. 

2017.  Moving by the Spirit: Pentecostal Social Life on the Zambian Copperbelt.  University of California Press.