Notes on Contributors

Kristien Geenen is a research associate at the University of Liège. She holds a PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Leuven. She has long-standing fieldwork experience in urban Congo, particularly in the cities of Kinshasa, Butembo and Kolwezi. In 2015–16, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University, examining social life in hospitals in Kinshasa and Mbandaka. From 2017 until June 2020, she was affiliated with Université de Liège as a postdoctoral researcher, examining trade unions in the mining industry in the Congolese copperbelt, as part of the WORKinMINING research project. Besides urban anthropology, she has a keen interest in history and photography.

Emma Lochery is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Liège. As part of the WORKinMINING project, she researched the regulation and management of employment in Zambia’s copper mines. She holds a doctorate in politics from the University of Oxford and worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Group for Research on Ethnic Relations, Migration and Equality at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. Her work has also examined the politics of infrastructure in post-conflict Somaliland, the governance of citizenship in Kenya, and mobility and trade between eastern Africa and China.

Thomas McNamara is a lecturer in Development Studies at La Trobe University and the Deputy Director of La Trobe’s Master in International Development. As part of the WORKinMINING project, he studied the role of trade unions in the mining industry in Zambia. His key research interest is how Global South economies are shaped by and guide affective relationships and moral norms, especially norms and narratives relating to ‘development’. He has a PhD from the University of Melbourne and has conducted fieldwork in Zambia and Malawi.

James Musonda received an MA degree in Labour Policy and Globalisation from the University of Witwatersrand in 2016. His MA thesis was concerned with the ways in which mineworkers living in the communities around a mine experience and respond to the pollution caused by the company which is also their employer. James is currently a doctoral student at University of Liège. As part of the WORKinMINING project, he investigated the changes brought about by new mining investments to the organisation of work, and on gender and intergenerational relationships within mineworkers’ families in Zambia. His previous experience as a trade union leader in the Zambian mining sector, and his close links with mineworkers and trade unions, was important to carrying out his research.

Francesca Pugliese is currently working in the WORKinMINING project as a PhD candidate in Social Anthropology at the University of Liège and in History at Leiden University. Her research within the project focused on mineworkers in the Congolese copperbelt. After obtaining her BA and MRes degrees in Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at Sapienza, University of Rome, she received an MA in African Studies from the University of Leiden. Her master’s thesis explored issues linked to land tenure, land grabbing and corporate social responsibility of oil and gas companies in Western Ghana. Before starting her PhD project, she worked for two years on a European project dealing with gender inequalities in the workplace and women’s difficulties maintaining a work–life balance.

Benjamin Rubbers, the book editor and the principal investigator of the WORKinMINING project, received his PhD degree in Social Anthropology from the Université Libre de Bruxelles and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in 2006. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Oxford, he was appointed Full Professor at the Université de Liège and part-time Lecturer at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. In 2015, he was invited to become Research Associate at the Society, Work, and Development Institute of the University of Witwatersrand. His research focuses on social changes in the Congolese copperbelt, where he has conducted research since 2000.