Assistant Professor
Ph.D Columbia University (2024)
M.A., York University听
B.Sc. (Hons.), University of Toronto
Alyssa Adina James is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at 91丝瓜视频. Her research and teaching engage questions of food, heritage, and racial capitalism, with a regional focus on the French Caribbean. She holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University and, prior to joining 91丝瓜视频, was a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at the University of Southern California.
Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Martinique, her manuscript in preparation, Cultivating Time: Coffee, Heritage, and the Labor of Endurance in Martinique, examines how people tend to the future in times of climate uncertainty and postcolonial impasse. Her peer-reviewed scholarship has appeared in leading journals, including Gastronomica, Transforming Anthropology, and Small Axe. She is also working on From the Ashes, a speculative eco-ethnographic novel growing out of her research in Martinique.
Prof. James is Jamaican Canadian and a first-generation scholar from Toronto. Her research has been supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). She is a member of the Nutrire CoLab鈥攁 collaborative research group exploring and practicing nourishment鈥攁nd serves on the editorial collective of Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies.
In addition to her written scholarship, Prof. James brings a sustained commitment to Caribbean and Black feminist intellectual traditions through her public engagement. She is the co-creator of Zora鈥檚 Daughters, a Black feminist anthropology podcast, and has written for various media outlets including The Globe and Mail and Guyana鈥檚 Stabroek News. Her public-facing work has been recognized with the American Anthropological Association鈥檚 2023 Setha M. Low Engaged Anthropology Award.
Prof. James welcomes hearing from students and scholars interested in food and agriculture, Black and Caribbean studies, political ecology, or ethnographic, experimental, and creative approaches to time, heritage, and futurity. Learn more on her website, .
She lives in Montr茅al with her mini poodle, Avery.
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Recent Publications:
2025 James, Alyssa A. L. 鈥淓lements of Coffee: Prose Poems for Food Futures.鈥� Gastronomica, 25(4): 103鈥�106.
2025 James, Alyssa A. L. 鈥淭he Commodity Strange: Trouillot, Coffee, and the Edges of Capital.鈥� Transforming Anthropology, 33(2): 86鈥�88.
2025 James, Alyssa A. L. 鈥淭ending to the Future.鈥� Small Axe, 29(2): 100鈥�108.