I am a cultural and linguistic anthropologist interested in technology and conflict intervention.

I am currently a Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. I teach introductory anthropology courses as well as seminars on infrastructure, humanitarianism, Africa, and visual and sensory anthropology. My primary research focus is on humanitarian and human rights interventions that use media technology amid armed conflict in east and central Africa, where I study how humanitarianism and security are understood in practice and how technology mediates and shapes such interventions.

I completed my PhD in Anthropology at George Washington University in Washington, DC. My dissertation, Networks of Protection: Infrastructures of Intervention in Northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, centers on a humanitarian project in Haut Uélé, DRC, which reappropriates church-based two-way radios to establish a conflict early warning network that aims to connect rural communities and enable their protection. I am also completing related research on broadcast radio, rebel demobilization, and counterinsurgency in Uganda and DR Congo. My research has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as African Studies Review and Anthropological Quarterly, as well as in popular media including African Arguments, Guernica, Justice in Conflict, and Warscapes. My research has been supported by the Social Science Research Council, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, National Science Foundation, U.S. Institute of Peace, George Washington University, and Yale University.

I have also thought, organized, researched, and written quite a bit about social media and academia as well as academic labor more broadly. I was co-section editor and contributing editor at the Society for Cultural Anthropology, a founding member of the GW Anthropology Department’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task Force, and part of the organizing committee of GWU Graduate Workers United’s campaign for a graduate student union.

Before my PhD, I earned a MA in African Studies at Yale University and BAs in Global Studies, History, and Education at Arizona State University. I briefly taught high school social studies in Arizona and Connecticut. In DC, I was involved in several labor and community organizing efforts around labor unionism, queer feminism, abolitionism, antifascism, and immigrant rights. I was a core organizer with Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network in DC, which you should donate to.

I use he/him pronouns.

You can find more about my writing and research on this website, as well as a defunct blog where I used to write infrequently about anthropology, African politics, and intervention as well as politics, conflict, history, and writing. You can contact me at scottandrewross [at] gmail [dot] com. I’m on twitter at @scott_a_ross.