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Zoë Goodman

Zoë Goodman

Zoë Goodman is co-organizer, together with Paul Rabé (UKNA and Asian Cities Cluster Coordinator), of a symposium on “Climate Change in Coastal Cities: Centering the Voices of Urban Residents in Asia and Africa”, to be held at ICAS 12 in Kyoto, Japan in August 2021. The symposium will bring together scholars of coastal cities in Africa and Asia situated and explore qualitative and locally situated accounts of changing weather patterns, from the perspective of urban residents. For more information about this event, please consult the concept note.

Zoë is an urban anthropologist working in Mombasa, Kenya. Her work explores themes of urbanity, security and piety amongst Muslims of Gujarati origin (Muslim Kenyan Asians) who count generations of residence in the city.

Zoë’s scholarship engages with the literature on cities and racialised minorities in East Africa, as well as Indian Ocean cosmopolitanisms, insecurity, architecture and Islam on the Swahili coast.

Zoë has a PhD in Social Anthropology (2018) from SOAS, University of London. She taught in the Anthropology department at SOAS for a number of years, most recently co-convening the Migration and Diaspora Studies programme.

Zoë has also worked in the development sector, particularly on issues relating to seeds, land and agribusiness for UNCTAD (the UN Conference on Trade and Development), and other trade-related NGOs. She has conducted research in Kenya, Cote d'Ivoire, Tanzania, Kyrgyzstan and the UK.