Michelle Johnson is Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. A cultural anthropologist specializing in religion and ritual in West Africa and the contemporary African diaspora (i.e., West African immigrants in Europe and the United States), she has conducted extensive fieldwork in Guinea-Bissau and with Guinean immigrants in Portugal. She has held grants from the Social Science Research Council, the U.S. Department of Education (Fulbright-Hays), and the Institute for Citizens &; Scholars (formerly the Woodrow Wilson Foundation). Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Religion in Africa, African Studies Review, Anthropology Quarterly, and Food and Foodways. She is author of Re-making Islam in African Portugal: Lisbon - Mecca - Bissau (Indiana University Press, 2020) and co-author (with Edmund “Ned” Searles) of Reciprocity Rules:Friendship and Compensation in Fieldwork Encounters (Lexington Books, 2021). She provides COI expert information and testimony on asylum cases pertaining to West Africa and the contemporary African diaspora on the topics of female genital cutting, arranged (forced) marriage, and religious persecution and freedom. She teaches courses on anthropological theory and methods, the anthropology of religion, African Studies, and the life course. In 2019, she was awarded Bucknell University’s 1956 Lectureship for Inspirational Teaching.
Disability, Ethnic discrimination or persecution, Female genital mutilation/circumcision/FGC, Forced marriage, LGBTQ, Religious discrimination or persecution, Safe internal relocation, Tribal discrimination or persecution, Violence against children/child abuse
I have worked on a total of 10 asylum cases, serving as a COI expert for clients from several countries in West Africa, including Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and The Gambia. I specialize in female genital cutting, men's and women's initiation rituals, arranged (forced) marriage, and religious persecution and freedom among ethnically Mande (e.g., Mandinga, Mandinka, Malinke) and Fula peoples. I provide both written reports and verbal (remote) testimony.
Re-making Islam in African Portugal: Lisbon - Mecca - Bissau (Indiana University Press, 2020), Reciprocity Rules: Friendship and Compensation in Fieldwork Encounters (Lexington Books, 2021), "Never Forget Where You're From: Raising Guinean Muslim Babies in Portugal," In A World of Babies: Imagined Childcare Guides for Eight Societies (Cambridge, 2017), "Guinea-Bissau," in Worldmark Encyclopedia of Religious Practices (Thomas Riggs, 2014),"Seven Things To Know about Female Genital Surgeries in Africa" (Hastings Center Report, 2012), "Making Mandinga or Making Muslims? Debating Female Circumcision, Ethnicity, and Islam in Guinea-Bissau and Portugal," In Transcultural Bodies: Female Genital Cutting in Global Context (Rutgers, 2007), "Becoming a Muslim, Becoming a Person: Female 'Circumcision,' Religious Identity, and Personhood in Guinea-Bissau," in Female "Circumcision" in Africa: Culture, Controversy, and Change (Lynne Rienner, 2000),