Stephanie Wynne-Jones

Pro Futura Scientia Fellow, SCAS.
Researcher, Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University

Stephanie Wynne-Jones studied archaeology at the universities of Bristol and Cambridge. She was
awarded a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 2006 for the thesis Urbanisation at Kilwa,
Tanzania, a.d. 800-1400, a landscape study of settlement change during the growth of an important
Swahili town on the coast of southern Tanzania. She has worked as Assistant Director of the British
Institute in Eastern Africa, Research Fellow at the University of Bristol and Lecturer at the University
of York.

Wynne-Jones has current projects at Songo Mnara, Tanzania (with Jeffrey Fleisher, Rice University)
and on Zanzibar at Unguja Ukuu. She has also conducted archaeological investigations at Vumba,
Kenya, and along the central caravan route in Tanzania. She has published widely on themes of
Swahili archaeology and historiography, particularly specializing in material culture. Her monograph
A Material Culture: Consumption and Practice on the Pre-colonial Coast of East Africa (Oxford
University Press, 2016) brings together many of these projects as part of a discussion of the ancient
Swahili relationship with objects and wealth. The edited collection Theory in Africa: Africa in Theory
(Routledge, 2015, with J. Fleisher) explores another of Wynne-Jones’ research interests: the place of
Africa in academic thought.

During her time at SCAS, Wynne-Jones is editing The Swahili World, a major work commissioned as
part of the Routledge Worlds series, due 2017. She will also be developing a new research project
exploring local production for trade on the pre-colonial East African coast. This will be the first
attempt to explore local production and priorities in the region’s engagement with Indian Ocean trade.

This information is accurate as of the academic year 2016-17.