Michelle Johnson

About Michelle Johnson

Michelle Johnson is Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology andamp; Anthropology at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. A cultural anthropologist specializing in religion and ritual in West Africa and the contemporary African diaspora (i.e., West African immigrants in Europe and the United States), she has conducted extensive fieldwork in Guinea-Bissau and with Guinean immigrants in Portugal. She has held grants from the Social Science Research Council, the U.S. Department of Education (Fulbright-Hays), and the Institute for Citizens andamp; Scholars (formerly the Woodrow Wilson Foundation). Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Religion in Africa, African Studies Review, Anthropology Quarterly, and Food and Foodways. She is author of Re-making Islam in African Portugal: Lisbon – Mecca – Bissau (Indiana University Press, 2020) and co-author (with Edmund andquot;Nedandquot; Searles) of Reciprocity Rules: Friendship and Compensation in Fieldwork Encounters (Lexington Books, 2021). She provides COI expert information and testimony on asylum cases pertaining to West Africa and the contemporary African diaspora on the topics of female genital cutting, arranged (forced) marriage, and religious persecution and freedom. She teaches courses on anthropological theory and methods, the anthropology of religion, African Studies, and the life course. In 2019, she was awarded Bucknell University’s 1956 Lectureship for Inspirational Teaching.