Dr Dena Freeman
- Areas of expertise
- Pentecostalism in Africa, esp. Ethiopia; Traditional Ethiopian cultures; Anthropology of development; Religion and development; Evangelical development organisations; alternative conceptualisations of ‘development’.
- Faculty
- Department of Anthropology
- School
- London School of Economics and Political Science
- Faculty profile link
- http://www.lse.ac.uk/anthropology/people/freeman.aspx
Dena Freeman is interested in the way that religious change intersects with processes of economic development in rural communities in Africa, particularly in Ethiopia where she has been carrying out research for over 20 years. She has recently also started to look at the work of Evangelical development organisations and is currently exploring how a faith-based persepective shapes their approach to development. She is the author or editor of several books, including Pentecostalism and Development: Churches, NGOs and Social Change in Africa (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). She is on the Steering Committee of the AHRC research network 'Keeping Faith in 2030: Religions and the Sustainable Development Goals' and is a Senior Fellow in the Religion and Development Research Group at the Centre for Religion, Politics and Economics at the University of Basel, Switzerland.