Louisa Lombard

I am a cultural anthropologist who studies African borderland areas where the state is largely absent, and a range of actors govern. How, in such contexts, do people navigate fragile relationships of trust and claim access to resources and authority? My main fieldwork interlocutors are among the region’s men-in-arms, such as anti-poaching guards, rebels, and soldiers.
I am the author of State of Rebellion: Violence and Intervention in the Central African Republic (2016), and Hunting Game: Raiding Politics in the Central African Republic (2020). I am currently completing a book manuscript about military peacekeepers in Africa and the ethical dilemmas they face as they attempt to intervene aggressively for the sake of humanitarian aims like protecting civilians.  
At Yale I co-convene the MacMillan Center Political Violence and its Legacies workshop and am a member of the Executive Board of the Program on Agrarian Studies. I am also a co-editor of HAU: The Journal of Ethnographic Theory. 

Selected recent publications:


“Radical Autochthony? Proprietary Political Discourse Among Elites and Peasants in the Anti-Balaka Armed Movement in the Central African Republic” (with Gino Vlavonou). African Studies Review (forthcoming). 

“Transformations in Occult Protection Amid Violence in the Central African Republic” (with Mobito Kozaga). In Krause, Jana, et al., eds. Civilian Protective Agency in Violent Settings. Oxford University Press (forthcoming 2024).

“Humanitarian Profiteering in the Central African Republic: Conspiracy/Rumor and the Challenges of Invisible Ontologies.” In Lisa Wedeen and Joseph Masco, eds., Conspiracy/Theory. University of Chicago Press (forthcoming 2024). 

“Sovereignty Triangles: Emotions and Transactions in Central African Relations with Russia.” HAU 12.3(2022).

“The ReStarting of History: Life in Changing Spheres of Russian Influence.” HAU 12.3(2022).

“The Interpretation of Relationships: Fieldwork as Boundary Negotiation.” Ethnography (2022): 1–21.

“Sovereignty as Generator of Inconsistent State Desire in Northeastern Central African Republic.” In Madeleine Reeves and Rebecca Bryant, eds., Everyday Sovereignty. Cornell University Press (2021).

 “Neighborly Peacekeepers.” South Central Review. 2–3(2020): 119132.

“Denouncing Sovereignty: Claims to Liberty in Northeastern Central African Republic.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 60.4 (2018): 1066–1095. Shortlist, Jack Goody Prize.

“The Threat of Rebellion: Claiming Entitled Personhood in Central Africa.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 22.3 (2016): 552–569.