David Pratten joined the African Studies Centre in 2005-06. He is a social anthropologist and his post is a joint appointment with the Institute of Social Anthropology. He studied at Oxford, Manchester and SOAS, and previously taught at the universities of Edinburgh and Sussex.
David's research is based on a long-term engagement with Annang villagers in south-eastern Nigeria and focuses on themes of history, violence and the state. The focus of his initial work was an historical ethnography of colonialism which focused on the events surrounding a series of mysterious deaths in south-eastern Nigeria during the late 1940s. More recently his research has examined issues of youth, democracy and disorder in post-colonial Nigeria with a particular focus on vigilantism and new masquerade performances.