Scholarship and Biography
Dorothy L. Hodgson is a Professor of Anthropology at Brandeis University. She served as the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Anthropology from 2018 to 2023. Previously, she was at Rutgers University for 25 years, where she was Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs for the School of Graduate Studies and Distinguished Professor of Anthropology.
Hodgson has worked in East Africa for more than 30 years, primarily among Maasai communities in Tanzania. Her research has examined such topics as gender, ethnicity, cultural politics, colonialism, the missionary encounter, transnational organizing and the indigenous rights movement. She has authored or edited 10 books and numerous articles and book chapters, with the support of awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies, National Sciences Foundation, Social Science Research Council, Fulbright-Hays, Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, and Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, among other sources.
Hodgson has served as president of the African Studies Association (2015-2016) and of the Association for Feminist Anthropology (2009-2011). She also previously served as chair and graduate director of Rutgers' Department of Anthropology and director of Rutgers’ Institute for Research on Women. She is currently editor-in-chief of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia on African Women’s History and Chair of the Executive Committee of the Delegates of the American Council for Learned Societies.
Hodgson earned her bachelor's degree in English at the University of Virginia, and her master's and doctoral degrees in anthropology at the University of Michigan.