Professor and Chair of Anthropology

Charles C. Tillinghast, Jr. Professor of International Studies

Daniel Jordan Smith joined the Department of Anthropology at Brown in 2001 after two years as a Mellon postdoctoral fellow at PSTC. Smith conducts research in Nigeria focusing on a range of issues, including population processes, political culture, kinship, gender, and health.

He won the 2008 Margaret Mead Award for his first book, A Culture of Corruption: Everyday Deception and Popular Discontent in Nigeria (Princeton University Press, 2007). Smith’s second single-authored book, AIDS Doesn’t Show Its Face: Inequality, Morality, and Social Change in Nigeria (University of Chicago Press, 2014) won the 2015 Elliott P. Skinner Award from the Association for Africanist Anthropology. His most recent book is To Be a Man Is Not a One-Day Job: Masculinity, Money, and Intimacy in Nigeria (University of Chicago Press, 2017).

Smith has completed several major research projects with grants awarded by NSF and NIH, among others, with a primary focus in the HIV epidemic in Nigeria. He was the recipient of the 2007-9 William C. McGloughlin Award for Teaching Excellence in the Social Sciences and in 2015 he was appointed Royce Family Professor of Teaching Excellence. From 2006-2011 he served as PSTC Associate Director. He is currently Director of the Watson Institute's Africa Initiative.

Selected Publications

2018. Hirsch, Jennifer, Philbin, Morgan, Smith, Daniel Jordan, and Parker, Richard. “From Structural Analysis to Pragmatic Action: Meso-level Modifiable Social Determinants of HIV Vulnerability for Labor Migrants.” In Structural Dynamics of HIV: Risk, Resilience and Response, Deanna Kerrigan and Claire Barrington, eds. Springer, pp. 19-43.

2016. Smith, Daniel Jordan. “Modern Marriage, Masculinity, and Intimate Partner Violence in Nigeria.” In Marital Rape: Consent, Marriage, and Social Change in Global Context, Kersti Yllo and M. Gabriela Torres, eds. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 41-54.

2015. Smith, Daniel Jordan and J. Johnson-Hanks. “Introduction” to special issue, “Population and Development: Comparative Anthropological Perspectives,” Studies in Comparative International Development 54(4):433-454.

Scholarly Interests

Anthropological demography, Corruption, HIV/AIDS, Medical anthropology, Migration, Pentecostal Christianity, Political culture

Affiliated Departments

Department of Anthropology