Catherine Bolten earned her Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan in 2008. Her primary field site is the town of Makeni, in northern Sierra Leone. Bolten’s research interests include the ethics of post-war development, education policy and practice, youth, and morality. Her book I Did it to Save My Life: Loyalty and Survival in Sierra Leone will be published by the University of California Press in the flagship Series in Public Anthropology in 2012.
Bolten has previously consulted for the United Nations World Food Programme and Physicians for Social Responsibility, and has conducted extensive fieldwork on ethnobotany, eco-tourism, and development in Botswana. Her articles appear in The Journal of Modern African Studies and The Journal of Political Ecology.
