Research Anthropologist
Dr. Teferi Abate Adem is a research anthropologist at HRAF at Yale University, specializing in cross-cultural research on themes related to how humans and local livelihood systems mitigate and adapt to negative impacts of recurrent climate shocks and compounding extra-local stressors. He also holds faculty affiliation with the Yale Council on African Studies, and a visiting position with Wollo University, Ethiopia. He most recently served as a senior researcher in an NSF-supported, worldwide cross-cultural research, project that sought to understand the long-term cultural and institutional legacies of recurrent shocks. He was also a senior team member in another multi-year, and multi-university, project that explored cultural dimensions of resource conflict in Eastern Africa with particular focus on inter-ethnic cattle raiding along the Ethio-Kenyan border. Positions he held previously include a visiting assistant professor of international development and social change (IDSC) at Clark University, a postdoctoral fellow at the Program in Agrarian Studies (Yale University) and an assistant professor at Addis Ababa University where he also chaired the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. In terms of education, Teferi holds a Ph. D. in Anthropology (Boston University 2000), and an M.A. (in Social Anthropology) and B.A. (in Sociology) from Addis Ababa University.
Selected publications
2021. “The Moral Economy of Irregular Migration and Remittance Distribution in South
Wollo,” in Youth on the Move: Views from Below on Ethiopian International Migration. Asnake Kefale and Fana Gebresenbet, eds). Hurst Publishers. See https://www.bookdepository.com/Youth-on-Move-Fana-Gebresenbet/9781786999269
2020. (with Ember, Carol R., Tahlisa Brougham, and Emily Pitek), “Predictors of land privatization: Cross-cultural tests of defendability and resource stress theory” American Anthropologist. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13484
2019. “Vernacular Explanations of Rainfall Variability in Highland Ethiopia,” in Cultural Models of Nature and Climate Change among Primary Food Producers, (ed. Giovanni Bennardo), Routledge Press.
2019. “Land Tenure and Land Policy in the Evolving Development Discourse of Three Ethiopian Regimes,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Ethiopian Economy (eds. Fantu Cheru, Christopher Cramer and Arkebe Oqbay), Oxford University Press.
2018. (with Ember, Carol, Eric C. Jones, and Ian Skoggard), “Warfare, atrocities, and political participation: eastern Africa”, Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research, https://doi.org/10.1108/JACPR-05-2017-0290
2017. (with Cochrane, Logan) “Knowledge gaps, and opportunities for future research on Ethiopian food security and agriculture.” Ethiopian Journal of Applied Sciences and Technology 8, no. 2: 1-16.
2015. (with Carol Ember, Eric C. Jones, Ian Skoggard and A. J. Faas), “Dangerous Geography: Spatial Distribution of Livestock Raiding in Northwestern Kenya,” Ethnology, 51: 1-29.
2014. (Ember, Carol R., Ian Skoggard and A. J. Faas), “Rain and Raids Revisited: Disaggregating Ethnic Group Livestock Raiding in the Ethiopian-Kenyan Border Region,” Civil Wars, 16:3, 300-327.
2013. (with Ember, Carol R. and Ian Skoggard), “Risk, Uncertainty, and Violence in Eastern Africa: A Regional Comparison,“ Human Nature, Mar; 24 (1):33-58.
2012. (with Ember, Carol R., Ian Skoggard and Eric C. Jones “Livestock Raiding and Rainfall
Fluctuation in Northern Kenya, 1996-2009,” Civil Wars, Vol. 14, Issue 2, Pp. 159-181.
2012. “The Local Politics of Ethiopia’s Green Revolution in South Wollo.” In African Studies Review, Volume 55, no. 3, pp. 81–102.
2010. (with Ian Skoggard), “From Protectors to Predators: The Filial Disaffection of a Turkana
Age-Set,” Ethnology, Vol. 49, No. 4, Fall 2010, Pp. 249-262.
2004. “Decentralized There, Centralized Here: Local Governance and Paradoxes of Household Autonomy and Control in Northeast Ethiopia,1991-2001”. In Africa (Journal of the International African Institute), vol. 4, no. 4, Pp. 611-632.
1995. “Land Redistribution and Intra-Household Relations: The Case of Two Northern Ethiopian Farming Communities.” In Ethiopian Journal of Development Research. Vol. 17 (1). Pp. 23-42.