Rachel Spronk

Rachel Spronk is a Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam, working at the intersection of three scholarly fields - anthropology, gender and sexuality studies, and African studies. Her current work focuses on the (idea of) the middle classes in Kenya and Ghana and how social transformations across generations relate to changes in gender, sexuality and personhood. In her work she combines the ethnographic study of practices and self-perceptions with the task of rethinking our theoretical repertoires.

Keywords: gender and sexuality, love and intimacy, personhood and agency, modernity and globalisation, African middle-classes, and cosmopolitanism.

Recent publications:

Andrikopoulos, A., & Spronk, R. (2023). Family matters: same-sex relations and kinship practices in Kenya. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

Spronk, R., & Nyeck, S. N. (2021). Frontiers and pioneers in (the study of) queer experiences in Africa: Introduction. Africa, 91(3), 388-397.

Spronk, R. (2020). Structures, feelings and savoir faire: Ghana's middle classes in the making. Africa, 90(3), 470-488.

Spronk, R., & Hendriks, T. (Eds.) (2020). Readings in Sexualities from Africa. Indiana University Press.

Spronk, R. (2012). Ambiguous pleasures: sexuality and middle class self-perceptions in Nairobi. New York: Berghahn Books.