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Rosalind Fredericks

Associate Professor
rcf2@nyu.edu
(212) 992-9820
608 - 1 Wash Pl

Office Hours
Tuesday 2:00 TO 4:00 (BY APPT)
Friday 12:00 TO 2:00 (REMOTE BY APPT)

B.S., Environmental Science, Brown University, 1999
M.S., Geography and Development Studies, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2003
Ph.D., Geography, University of California, Berkeley, 2009

Rosalind Fredericks's research and teaching interests are centered on development, urbanism, and political ecology in Africa. As an urban geographer, her research brings together discard studies, critical infrastructure studies, and feminist political ecology in examining the politics of waste work and discard infrastructures in Dakar, Senegal. Her book manuscript, Garbage Citizenship: Vital Infrastructures of Labor in Dakar, Senegal (Duke University Press, September 2018) was awarded the Toyin Falola Book Award for the best book in African Studies by the Association of Global South Studies. Her current research project, supported by a major grant from the National Science Foundation, examines planning and activism surrounding recycling labor at the city's dump Mbeubeuss. With funding from a Green Grant from the NYU Office of Sustainability, she is collaborating with the NGO WIEGO to produce a documentary film about the politics of closing Mbeubeuss. Fredericks's research has won major funding support from the Social Science Research Council, Fulbright-Hays, and the National Science Foundation, and she was NYU's Stephen Charney Vladeck Junior Faculty Fellow for 2015-2016. After completing her Ph.D. in geography at the University of California, Berkeley, Fredericks was a postdoctoral research scholar with the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University. At Columbia, she taught with the Institute for African Studies and organized The World and Africa event series for the Committee on Global Thought. Fredericks has edited two books with Mamadou Diouf on citizenship in African cities: Les arts de la citoyenneté au Sénégal: ​E​spaces contestés et civilités urbaines (Editions Karthala, 2013) and The Arts of Citizenship in African Cities: Infrastructures and Spaces of Belonging (Palgrave MacMillan, 2014). Fredericks is the co-director (with Robin Nagle) of the Discard Studies Collaborative at NYU and co-organizer of the Discard Studies Conference to be held at Gallatin in September 2022. 

Performances, Productions, Exhibitions & Releases

2023

Religious infrastructure: from Africa and beyond

Rosalind Fredericks is going to give  a keynote address at the conference on "Religious infrastructure: from Africa and beyond" to be held at the Uni. of Ghana, Legon in June 2023.

Awards & Honors

2020

Fredericks Book Award

Rosalind Fredericks’s book Garbage Citizenship was awarded the 2020 Toyin Falola Best Book on Africa by the Association of Global South Studies.

Books

2018

Garbage Citizenship: Vital Infrastructures of Labor in Dakar, Senegal

Rosalin Fredericks' Garbage Citizenship: Vital Infrastructures of Labor in Dakar, Senegal was published by Duke University Press.

Edited Volumes

2014

The Arts of Citizenship in African Cities

The Arts of Citizenship in African Cities: Infrastructures and Spaces of Belonging, edited by Rosalind Fredericks and Mamadou Diouf is published by Palgrave Macmillan.
 

2013

Les Arts de la Citoyenneté au Sénégal: Espaces Contestés et Civilités Urbaines

Les Arts de la Citoyenneté au Sénégal: Espaces Contestés et Civilités Urbaines, edited by Rosalind Fredericks and Mamadou Diouf, was published by Editions Karthala.

Teaching and Research Interests

discard studies  global urbanism  African politics  Senegambian studies  youth studies  critical development studies  critical infrastructure studies  feminist geography  political ecology 

Recent News

AWARDS AND HONORS

 

Fredericks was a speaker, "Senegal: Democracy in Crisis?" NYU Africa House Roundtable, Nov. 1 2023.

Fredericks gave a keynote Lecture: “Salvaging Salvation: Spiritual Infrastructures and Uncanny Ecologies of Discard in Senegal.” Religious Infrastructures: From Africa and Beyond, University of Ghana, Legon/Accra, June 2023.

Fredericks presented her paper: “Salvaging Salvation: Spiritual Infrastructures and Uncanny Ecologies of Discard in Senegal.” African Studies Association meetings, San Francisco, December, 2023.

Fredericks was a conference panel organization and chair: "Religious Infrastructures in Africa" panel African Studies Association meeting, San Francisco, December 2023. (co-chair with Ben Kirby)
Fredericks organized the: "The Discard Studies Film Festival,"  Conference on April 26, 2024 at  Gallatin, NYU.

Fredericks was a Co-leader (with Stephen Duncombe): Dean's Honor Society, Art and Politics in Senegal, 2023-2024.

Professor Rosalind Fredericks was awarded the Toyin Falola Book Award from the Association of Global South Studies at the AGSS meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina in December 2019. 

Fredericks received a Conference Grant from the NYU Center for the Humanities for the Discard Studies Conference at NYU Gallatin in April 2020.

Fredericks was awarded a 2016-2019 National Science Foundation Grant for Geography and Spatial Sciences Division for her research project Infrastructural Citizenship: Political Ecologies of Discard in Dakar. With with Robin Nagle, Fredericks was awarded a 2016-2018 Research Collaborative Seed Grant from the NYU Humanities Initiative for the Discard Studies Collaborative.

PUBLICATIONS

Rosalind Fredricks contributed “Gendered Infrastructures of Discard in Dakar, Senegal,” to Gendered Infrastructures: Dialectics of Form, Identity and Space (West Virginia University Press, Expected 2021), edited by Yaffa Truelove and Anu Sabhlok.

CONFERENCES AND TALKS

Rosalind Fredricks presented her paper “Anthropocenic Discards: Infrastructural Labors and Uncanny Exposures at Dakar’s Dump.” at the Magrann Conference at the Rutgers University Department of Geography: “Intimate Toxicities: Technoscience, Material Natures, and Environmental Justice,” in May 2021.

Fredricks presented “Architecture and Informality” with Emmanuel Admassu at the Symposium on African Urbanism held at the Princeton Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities in April 2021.

As part of the Economy and Society Seminar Series at Oxford University’s School of Geography and Environment, Fredricks gave a talk entitled “Anthropocenic Discards: Infrastructural Labors and Uncanny Exposures at Dakar’s Dump” on February 23, 2021.

Fredericks served as a faculty convener alongside professor Duncan Yoon for “Postcolonial Urbanism at the Crossroads” at the Gallatin Faculty Symposium at the NYU Accra campus in March 2019.

Fredericks gave the talk, “Discarding the African Anthropocene,” at the African Studies Seminar held at Columbia University, New York, on December 5, 2019.

Fredericks presented “Anthropocenic Discards: Infrastructural Labors and Uncanny Exposures at Dakar’s Dump” for the Anthropology Department Colloquium held at the University of California, Berkeley, on October 21, 2019.

Fredericks presented “Infrastructures of Discard in the Anthropocene: Precarious Bodies, Ontological (In)Security, and the New Commons,” at the Science Technology & Society Research Seminar held at Vanderbilt University, Tennessee, on April 12, 2019.

Fredericks co-organized a panel with Asher Ghertner titled, “Cities Exposed: Exposure and Contamination in Dense Urban Worlds,” for the annual Association of American Geographers Conference held in Washington DC, on April 3-7, 2019.