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
Additional Campus Affiliations
Professor Emeritus, Geography and Geographic Information Science
Recent Publications
Koné, M., T. Bassett, & W. Munro. Distributive Governance and Persistent Inequalities in the Cashew Value Chain of Côte d’Ivoire. European Journal of Development Research 38 (2026): 342-364. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41287-025-00736-2
Bassett, Thomas J. "Drawing the Line: The Interplay of European and African Mapping Practices in the Carte du Haut-Niger au Golfe de Guinée (1:1,000,000)," Imago Mundi 27, no. 1 (2025): 23–44. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085694.2025.2511054
Bassett, Thomas J. “French Mapping and Colonization of 19th-Century West Africa.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. Oxford University Press, 2024—. Article published October 23, 2024; doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.1591.
Bassett, T. J., Koné, M., & Munro, W. (2022). Bringing to Scale: The Scaling-Up Concept in African Agricultural Value Chains. African Studies Review, 65(1), 66-92. https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2021.83
Bassett, T. J., & Munro, W. (2022). Lost in Translation: Pro-Poor Development in The Green Revolution for Africa. African Studies Review, 65(1), 8-15. https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2021.99