Dr. Kate Kingsbury obtained her doctorate in anthropology at the University of Oxford, where she also did her MPhil. Dr Kingsbury has done fieldwork in Africa and Latin America on spirituality, looking at how marginalised groups use this to assert agency and create counterhegemonic discourses around identity, gender and power. She did fieldwork in Mali with female witchcraft practitioners who used sorcery to gain agency, and in Senegal with disenfranchised Sufi youth, and Mouride street kids. She has been doing fieldwork in Mexico since 2017 on the female followers of Santa Muerte and female foundational figures, spending her time immersed in a local community in rural Oaxaca with curanderos, leaders and devotees of Santa Muerte to better understand the faith and its importance for reconfiguring conceptions of gender, power and identity. She is the author of the forthcoming book on Santa Muerte “Daughters of Death: Female Followers of Santa Muerte” with Oxford University Press. Dr. Kingsbury is a staunch believer in equal rights and the power of education to ameliorate global disparities. She also works pro bono for a non profit organisation that aims to empower and educate girls in Uganda, Africa. www.uganda4her.org
