My Biography
Alyssa A. James has been selected to receive the 2023 Setha M. Low Engaged Anthropology Award. This award honors individual anthropologists (or multi-disciplinary groups or organizations with at least one anthropologist) or projects which have demonstrated a deep commitment to social justice and community engagement by applying anthropology to effectively address a pressing issue facing people and the planet.
Alyssa A. James is a first-generation Jamaican Canadian scholar and writer from Toronto, Canada. She received her Honours Bachelor of Science with Distinction in Psychology and Equity Studies from the University of Toronto and a Master of Arts in Social Anthropology from York University. She is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University where she studies how discourses of possibility shape the nascent coffee industry in Martinique and shed light on Caribbean futures. Her scholarship receives generous support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Wenner-Gren Foundation. She is co-host of Zora’s Daughters Podcast, a Black feminist anthropological take on popular culture and issues that concern Black women which was the recipient of a 2022 Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities and Humanities New York Public Humanities Graduate Fellowship. Outside of academe, you can find Alyssa dancing, travelling, and writing about it.