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Thomas J Bassett

Profile picture for Thomas J Bassett

Contact Information

LAS Global Studies
703 S. Wright Street
3rd Floor, MC-301
Champaign, IL 61820
Professor Emeritus

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

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

Peimer, A. W., Rhoads, B. L., & Bassett, T. J. (2022). Standardizing No Net Loss Stream Mitigation Assessment Methods: Tradeoffs between Expediency and River Science. Journal of the American Water Resources Association, 58(6), 1407-1420. https://doi.org/10.1111/1752-1688.13045

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

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