I am an anthropologist specialising in labour, migration, borders, development and the social dynamics of money. My research has been based in both university and museum settings. In addition to my current courses, I have taught on anthropology and development, globalisation, and surveys in ethnographic research.
Maxim received his PhD in social anthropology from the London School of Economics in 2011. He had previously studied history and politics as an undergraduate at St Peter’s College, Oxford, and then social anthropology as a Masters student at LSE. Maxim took up a lectureship at Birmingham in 2012.
Maxim’s PhD thesis was Runner-up for the 2010-12 Audrey Richards Prize, awarded biennially by the African Studies Association of the UK, for the best PhD thesis on Africa examined in the UK.
Maxim conducted his doctoral fieldwork along South Africa’s border with Zimbabwe, between 2006 and 2008, during acute economic and political troubles in Zimbabwe. His research focused on the border farms, their black workforces and their white landowners in this context of crisis, upheaval and displacement.
Since his PhD research, he has worked as the anthropologist on the British Museum’s comparative, collaborative ‘Money in Africa’ project, alongside historians and an economic historian. As part of this project, he has conducted research with central banks in Nigeria and Uganda, and with small businesspeople in Malawi.
Maxim is currently preparing a monograph, based on his PhD research, for the International African Library, Cambridge University Press.