BOOKS

In preparation Slavery and Emancipation in Twentieth Century Africa. Cambridge University Press (New Approaches to African History series).

2021 Les Mondes de l’Esclavage: Une Histoire Comparée. Co-edited with Paulin Ismard and Cécile Vidal. Paris: Seuil.

2018 Landscapes, Sources, and Intellectual Projects in West African History. Co-edited with Toby Green. Leiden: Brill. ISBN: 9789004380189. Download Introduction New Nigerian edition released by Malthouse Press Limited, Lagos, November 2020, ISBN: 9789785764383.

2015 From Slavery to Aid: Politics, Labour, and Ecology in the Nigerien Sahel, 1800-2000. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press (African Studies series). ISBN: 9781107119055. (Finalist for the 2016 Melville J. Herskovits Award awarded by the African Studies Association, USA; finalist for the 2016 Fage and Oliver Prize awarded by the African Studies Association, UK) Download Introduction – download Chapter 3 – download epilogue

2010 Being and Becoming Hausa: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Co-edited with Anne Haour. Leiden: Brill. ISBN: 9789004185425; E-ISBN: 9789004185432. Download Introduction and Chapter 5.  

2009 Reconfiguring Slavery: West African Trajectories. Sole editor. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. ISBN: 9781846311994. Paperback with new preface (released February 2016): ISBN 9781781383056. Download Introduction 

RESEARCH ARTICLES

2022 with Joel Quirk, ‘Slavery and Marriage in African Societies‘. Slavery & Abolition, vol. 43, no. 2 (June 2022), pp. 245-284.

2022 with Eunice Apio and Eleanor Seymour, ‘Captive Wives or Conjugal Slaves? The Slavery-Marriage Nexus in Northern Uganda Since the Mid-Nineteenth Century‘. Slavery & Abolition, vol. 43, no. 2 (June 2022), pp. 414-443.

2021 ‘Reflections on Public Slavery and Social Death‘. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, vol. 64, no. 2 (Dec. 2021), pp. 92–104.

2021 ‘Promises and Pitfalls of Global Comparisons: Slavery in West African Political Cultures‘. African Economic History, vol. 49, no. 1 (2021), pp. 15-46.

2020 ‘From Slavery? Rethinking Slave Descent as an Analytical Category: The Case of the Mauritanian and Moroccan Hratin‘. L’Ouest Saharien, vol. 10-11 (2020), pp. 187-208.

2020 ‘Beyond the Atlantic Paradigm: Slavery and Abolitionism in the Nigérien Sahel‘. Journal of Global Slavery, vol. 5, no. 2 (2020), pp. 238-269.

2017 ‘Périodiser la fin de l’esclavage. Le droit colonial, la Société des Nations et la résistance des esclaves dans le Sahel nigérien, 1920-1930’ (English version: ‘‘Periodizing the End of Slavery: Colonial Law, the League of Nations and Slave Resistance in the Nigerien Sahel, 1920s-1930s‘‘). Annales (Histoire, Sciences Sociales), vol. 72, no. 4 (2017), pp. 983-1021.

2017 ‘What “Development” Does to Work’. International Labor and Working Class History, vol. 92 (Fall 2017), pp. 7-23. Introduction to special issue guest-edited by Benedetta Rossi.

2017 ‘From Unfree Work to Working for Free: Labor, Aid, and Gender in the Nigerien Sahel, 1930–2000’. International Labor and Working Class History, vol. 92 (Fall 2017), pp. 155-182. In special issue guest-edited by Benedetta Rossi.

2017 ‘Freedom Under Scrutiny’. Journal of Global Slavery, vol. 2, no. 1 (2017), pp. 185-194. 

2016 ‘Dependence, Unfreedom, and Slavery in Africa: Toward an Integrated Analysis’. Africa, vol. 86, no. 3, pp. 571-590. 

2016 ‘The Agadez Chronicles and Y Tarichi: A Reinterpretation’. History in Africa, vol. 43 (2016), pp. 95-140. 

2016 ‘Preface to the Second Edition‘. In B. Rossi (ed.) Reconfiguring Slavery: West African Trajectories. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press 2016 [2009], pp. xiii-xvii. 

2015 ‘African Post-Slavery: A History of the Future’. International Journal of African Historical Studies, vol. 48, no. 2, pp. 303-324. 

2015 ‘Kinetocracy: The Government of Mobility at the Desert’s Edge’. In J. Quirk and D. Vigneswaran (eds.) Mobility Makes States: Migration and Power in Africa. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 223-256. 

2014 ‘Tubali’s Trip: Rethinking Informality in the Study of West African Labour Migrations’. Canadian Journal of African Studies, vol. 48, no. 1, pp. 77-100. Full text available online ‘open access’.

2014 ‘Migration and Emancipation in West Africa’s Labour History: The Missing Links’. Slavery and Abolition, vol. 35, Issue 1 (2014), pp. 23-46.

2013 ‘Without History? Interrogating Slave Memories in Ader (Niger)’. In M. Klein, C. Brown, S. Greene, and A. Bellagamba (eds.) African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 536-554. 

2010 with Anne Haour, ‘The Emergence of Hausa Identity: History and Religion’. In A. Haour and B. Rossi (eds.) Being and Becoming Hausa: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, pp. 1-34.  

2010 ‘Being and Becoming Hausa in Ader (Niger)’. In A. Haour and B. Rossi (eds.) Being and Becoming Hausa: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, pp. 113-140.  

2009 ‘Introduction: Rethinking Slavery in West Africa’, in B. Rossi (ed.) Reconfiguring Slavery: West African Trajectories, pp. 1-25. 

2009 ‘Slavery and Migration: Physical and Social mobility in Ader (Tahoua)’. In B. Rossi (ed.) Reconfiguring Slavery: West African Trajectories, pp. 182-206.           

2009 ‘The Paradox of Chronic Aid’. In X. Crombé and J.H. Jézéquel (eds.) A Not-so-natural Disaster: Niger 2005. London: Hurst (English translation of original French volume), pp. 105-124.

2007 ‘Les Paradoxes des Aides Chroniques’. In X. Crombé and J.H. Jézéquel (eds.) Niger 2005: Une Catastrophe Si Naturelle. Paris: Karthala, pp. 145-172.

2006 ‘Aid Policies and Recipient Strategies in Niger’. In D. Lewis and D. Mosse (eds.) Development Brokers and Translators: The Ethnography of Aid and Development. Bloomfield: Kumarian, pp. 27-49.

2004 ‘Order and Disjuncture: Theoretical Shifts in the Anthropology of Aid and Development’. Current Anthropology, vol. 45, no. 4, pp. 556-560. 

2004 ‘Revisiting Foucauldian Approaches: Power Dynamics in Development Projects’. The Journal of Development Studies, vol. 40, no. 6, pp. 1-29.

2001 ‘Women, Land and Development: Gendered Paradigms of Tenure in the Rural Development Project of Keita (Niger)’. In Matteo, S. (ed.) ItaliAfrica: Bridging Continents and Cultures. New York: Forum Italicum Press, pp. 119-142.

ENCYCLOPAEDIAS AND REFERENCE PUBLICATIONS

2019 ‘Hausa’, a 200-entry commented bibliography for the Oxford Bibliographies Online, African Studies. Oxford University Press.

2018 ‘African Migration: History and Historiography’. In The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. Oxford University Press. 

2005 Five entries: ‘Marshall Plan’; ‘Food Aid’; ‘Power, Discourse and Development’; ‘Governmentality’; and ‘Actor Oriented Approaches,’ Routledge Encyclopedia of International Development. General editor: Tim Forsyth; London: Routledge.

MEDIA, BLOG-POSTS, AND REPORTS

2020 Interview with Benedetta Rossi about her current research at UCL: ‘UCL welcomes Dr Benedetta Rossi who joins us as an Associate Professor in African History.’

2019 ‘Benedetta Rossi : « Au Sahel, l’idéologie qui justifie l’esclavage n’est pas complètement morte »‘, interview with Benedetta Rossi, Le Monde Afrique, 10 March 2019.

2017 ‘The Power of Saviors’, interview with Benedetta Rossi. Published online in the website of Humboldt University (Berlin), 18 December 2017.

2017 ‘Modern Slavery, Brexit, Migration, and Development: Connecting the Dots’. Beyond Trafficking and Slavery, an Open Democracy blog, 21 November 2017.

2015 ‘The Everyday Gender Inequalities that Underpin Wartime Atrocities’. Beyond Trafficking and Slavery, an Open Democracy blog, 22 April 2015.

2010 Physical and Social Mobility in Ader (Tahoua, Niger). Final Report (40 pages) of the Research Project Mobilités Ouest-Africaines (MOBOUA) for the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD).              

2010 ‘Il faut penser une forme d’aide qui va aider le Niger à se passer de l’aide’, interview with Benedetta Rossi, published on national newspaper of the Republic of Niger, Le Républicain, no. 932, 10-16 June 2101, p. 8 (full page).

2008 ‘Lingering Impact of Slavery’. Interview with Benedetta Rossi, Research Intelligence, issue 34, Spring 2008.

BOOK REVIEWS

2018, Lefebvre, Camille. ‘Frontières de sable, frontières de papier : histoire de territoires et de frontières, du jihad de Sokoto à la colonisation française du Niger, XIXe-XXe siècles’. Critique internationale, vol. 79, no. 2, pp. 205-209.

2014, Lawrance, B. and Roberts, R. (eds.) ‘Trafficking in Slavery’s Wake: Law and the Experience of Women and Children in Africa’. Slavery and Abolition, vol. 35, no. 4, pp. 677-679.

2011, Spaulding, J. and Beswick, S. (eds.) ‘African Systems of Slavery’. Africa, vol. 81, no. 2, pp. 265-266.

2010, Campbell, G., Miers, S., and Miller, J. (eds.) ‘Children in Slavery Through the Ages’. Africa, vol. 80, no. 3, pp. 516-518.

2009, (with Dmitri Van Den Bersselaar) Parker, J. and Rathbone, R. ‘African History: A Very Short Introduction’. Africa, vol. 79, no. 1, pp. 317-318.

2005, Diouf, S. (ed.) ‘Fighting the Slave Trade: West African Strategies’. Progress in Development Studies, vol. 7, no. 5, pp. 249-250.

2004, Liberski-Bagnoud, D. ‘Les Dieux du Territoire: Penser Autrement la Généalogie’. Man/Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. 10, no. 4, p. 967.

2004, Pottier, J., Bicker, A., and Sillitoe, P. (eds.) ‘Negotiating Local Knowledge: Power and Identity in Development’. Progress in Development Studies, vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 365-366.

2003, Hagberg, S. ‘Poverty in Burkina Faso: Representations and Realities’. Man/Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 173-174.

2002, Bierschenk, T., Chaveau, JP., Olivier de Sardan, JP. (eds.) ‘Courtiers en Développement: Les Villages Africains en Quête de Projets’. Man/Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 581-582.

2002, Casajus, D. ‘Gens de Parole: Langage, Poésie et Politique en Pays Touareg’. Man/Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 186-187