
Contact Information
2032 Natural History Building
MC-150
Urbana, IL 61801
Biography
Professor Tom Bassett has taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign since 1984. He was born in Lowell, Massachusetts and graduated from the Brooks School in N. Andover, Mass (1972). Bassett has a B.A. degree in English from Tufts University (1976), and a M.A. degree (1979) and PhD degree (1984) in Geography from the University of California at Berkeley. He has published 8 books and some 60 journal articles on his research.
Research Interests
Bassett's research centers on the political ecology of agrarian change in West Africa. Since 1981 he has carried out research on land rights system, the social and agricultural history of cotton, and land use and land cover change in the West African savanna with emphasis on Côte d’Ivoire. He also writes on the history of cartography of Africa.
Education
Ph.D., University of California-Berkeley
M.A., University of California-Berkeley
B.A., English, Tufts University
Courses Taught
External Links
Recent Publications
Bassett, T. J., Koné, M., & Pavlovic, N. R. (2018). Power Relations and Upgrading in the Cashew Value Chain of Côte d'Ivoire. Development and Change, 49(5), 1223-1247. https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12400
Gengenbach, H., Schurman, R. A., Bassett, T. J., Munro, W. A., & Moseley, W. G. (2018). Limits of the New Green Revolution for Africa: Reconceptualising gendered agricultural value chains. Geographical Journal, 184(2), 208-214. https://doi.org/10.1111/geoj.12233
Bassett, T. J., & Boutrais, J. (2017). Cattle and trees in the West African savanna. In Contesting Forestry in West Africa (pp. 242-263). Taylor and Francis Inc..
Bassett, T. (2017). Le boom de l’anacarde dans le bassin cotonnier du Nord ivoirien: Structures de marché et prix à la production. Afrique Contemporaine, 263-264(3-4), 59-83. https://doi.org/10.3917/afco.263.0059
Fogelman, C., & Bassett, T. J. (2017). Mapping for investability: Remaking land and maps in Lesotho. Geoforum, 82, 252-258. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2016.07.008