Deborah Pellow, longtime professor of anthropology at Syracuse University in New York, passed away on May 29. She was 80 years old.
Throughout her more than four-decades-long tenure at Syracuse, Dr. Pellow served in several academic leadership roles. She had stints as founding director of the Space and Place Initiative in the Global Affairs Institute, chair of the senate library committee, and director of the women and gender studies program. She also taught for many years in the interdisciplinary master of social science professional program. In the broader academic community, she was an active member of the American Anthropological Association and the Society for Urban National and Transnational Anthropology.
As a scholar of human relationships, Dr. Pellow contributed significantly to contemporary approaches to space and place. Early in her career, she conducted extensive fieldwork in Ghana, Nigeria, Japan, and China. During this time, she studied how people negotiate relationships and identities, as well as how people navigate multiple and overlapping urban, rural, and international realms. She was the author of several books, including A New African Elite: Place in the Making of a Bridge (Berghahn Books, 2022).
A native of Los Angeles, Dr. Pellow grew up in New York City and Philadelphia. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania and her Ph.D. from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.