Anna-Riikka Kauppinen is an economic anthropologist whose research explores trajectories of capitalist transformation and financial sector development in West Africa.

She received her PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2018. She joins the Graduate Institute from the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, where she worked as a Research Associate in the Max Planck Cambridge Centre for Ethics, Economy and Social Change (2018–2021). For the past three years, Anna-Riikka’s research has focused on the interface of finance, the private sector, and religion in Ghana’s capital, Accra, where Charismatic Pentecostal mega-churches have become important “investors” following the past 30 years of their growing popularity. They invest financial capital in their congregants’ enterprises, some of which have evolved into large corporations. She intends to continue this research in Nigeria’s Lagos in the near future. The second stream of her work and subject of her current book project investigates cultures of professionalism in Ghana, zooming in on social investment in career pursuits and “professionalisation“. In addition, Anna-Riikka sustains an interest in the colonial and postcolonial history of banking and finance in Africa.

As part of her appointment, she will join the recently launched Swiss Lab for Sustainable Finance (SL4SF) and the Centre for Finance and Development (CFD) as a new Pictet Chair in Finance and Development. She will explore the traction of ethnographically based financial theory in comparison to and dialogue with economics and international financial history.