Charles Piot

Charlie Piot, Peter Lange Faculty Director of DukeEngage and Professor of Cultural Anthropology & African and African American Studies, does research on the political economy and history of rural West Africa. His first book, Remotely Global: Village Modernity in West Africa (1999), attempted to re-theorize a classic out-of-the-way place as within the modern and global. His next book, Nostalgia for the Future: West Africa after the Cold War (2010), explored shifts in Togolese political culture during the 1990s, a time when the NGOs and charismatic churches took over the biopolitical, reorganizing social and political life in the absence of the state.  His most recent book, The Fixer: Visa Lottery Chronicles (2019), is about Togolese who apply for and attempt to game the US Diversity Visa Lottery.  He has begun research focusing on the return of Togolese from the diaspora to West Africa.