Kenneth G. Kelly, PhD

Dr. Kenneth G. Kelly, Distinguished Professor Emeritus (Anthropology, University of South Carolina) and Research Professor (Anthropology, Syracuse University), is a pioneering scholar in the multi-sited archaeology of the African Diaspora.  His research focuses on investigating daily life under plantation slavery in the French Caribbean, and the ways in which African societies engaged with the slave trade in West Africa.  Kelly has developed comparative approaches investigating the diverging colonial trajectories of the former French colonies of Guadeloupe and Martinique, and explored the differing impacts of the slave trade on state level societies in 18th c. Benin, and decentralized societies during the “illegal” 19th c. slave in Guinea.  

 

Professor Kelly has edited or coedited six books and special journal issues, and published over 50 articles and chapters in venues including Ethnohistory, Afriques, Atlantic Studies, and American Anthropologist, his research has been supported by the French Ministry of Culture, Fulbright, Wenner-Gren, and NSF, among others.  He received his Ph.D. from UCLA in 1995.  He has recently begun a project exploring the ways in which architecture is used in creating a sense of place and identity in the temporary camps of Black Rock City at the Burning Man festival in Nevada.  A National Fellow of The Explorers Club, he recently summited Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, as member of Flag Expedition #210.