My book project Running to Labor: Ethiopian Women Distance Runners in Networks of Capital examines how the transnational sporting industry shapes the organization of work and life, and how women athletes influence and change the industry. Based on 24 months of fieldwork in Ethiopia, along with multisided stints at an international sports agency in Pennsylvania, and attending competitions in Turkey, France, and Singapore, my dissertation situates the stories of women runners within global political economy of sport.
For this project I received funding from the Wenner Gren Foundation, the Smithsonian's Lemelson Center, the Olympic Studies Centre, the Society for the Anthropology of Work, the Center for French and Ethiopian Studies, and the Duke Graduate School.
Below are some of my academic publications:
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
“Putting Logos on the World’s Best Running Feet: The Emergence of Apparel Sponsors in Ethiopian and Kenyan Athletics,” with Jörg Krieger. The International Journal of the History of Sport. October, 2023.
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“Performative Disembedding: Amid and Between Potential and Professionalism in Ethiopian Girls’ Running.” NEOS: A Publication of the Anthropology of Children and Youth Interest Group. Volume 15, 1. Spring 2023.
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from the Wrist: The Surveillance of Ethiopian Women Athletes for Capital.” Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience. April 2021.
“Running for Ethiopia: A Performance of Social Reproduction.” Recreation and Society in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Volume 7. 2019.
Contributed Chapters
“Laboring Athletes, Laboring Mothers: Ethiopian Women Athletes’ Bodies at Work.” Sport, Migration, and Gender in the Neoliberal Age. Edited by Niko Besnier, Domenica Gisella Calabrò, and Daniel Guinness. Routledge. 2020.
“Naturalized East African Runners in the Middle East.” Routledge Handbook of Sport in the Middle East. Edited by Paul Michael Branagan and Danyel Reiche. Routledge. 2022.
“Feyisa Lilesa’s ‘Special Skills’ of Late Capitalist Sport: The Transnational Protest of Ethiopia’s most Enduring Olympian.” Sports and Protest in the Black Atlantic. Edited by Michael Gennaro & Brian McGowan. Routledge 2022.