POLLY HILL: CROSSING AND CONTESTING THE BOUNDARIES OF ANTHROPOLOGY, ECONOMICS, AFRICAN STUDIES, AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP STUDIES

Polly Hill spent her long, productive, and at times controversial career crossing contesting disciplinary boundaries. She graduated in economics Cambridge, but doctorate was social anthropology—with economist Joan Robinson as dissertation supervisor. Her thirteen years the University of Ghana were initially economics, then African studies, readership Cambridge Commonwealth studies. As a woman several male-dominated academic disciplines without secure base any (and with distinctive, unorthodox opinions each), she never obtained tenure-track appointment despite ten books fifty scholarly articles. drew attention to underrecognized agency indigenous entrepreneurs while Development Economics on Trial: The Anthropological Case for Prosecution (1986) critiqued discipline, boundaries, outside experts, both mainstream radical.