Lauren Coyle Rosen is a cultural anthropologist, poet, artist, and lawyer. She was an assistant professor of anthropology at Princeton University from 2016 to 2023. In May 2022, she received the President’s Award in Distinguished Teaching at Princeton. Her first book, titled Fires of Gold: Law, Spirit, and Sacrificial Labor in Ghana, came out with the University of California Press in 2020. Her second book, titled Law in Light: Priestesses, Priests, and the Revitalization of Akan Spirituality in the United States and Ghana, is forthcoming with University of California Press in 2024. She also recently completed a third book, a multisensorial ethnography of the music, liberation work, and spiritual co-creative practices of orchestral composer and jazz musician, Hannibal Lokumbe. The title of this book is Hannibal Lokumbe: Spiritual Soundscapes of Music, Life, and Liberation. She has published three volumes of poetry: At the Altar of the Winds, A Thousand Lit Streams, and Storms of Silent Wings. She has a fourth volume of poetry, Sky Ensouled, forthcoming. Coyle Rosen’s essays have appeared in various journals and edited volumes. Her work lies at the intersections of legal and political anthropology, comparative religion and spirituality, art and consciousness, and social theory. Her geographical focuses are on Ghana, on the African diaspora in the U.S., and on the U.S., more generally. She is currently an External Faculty Group member at the Institute on the Formation of Knowledge at the University of Chicago. She trained in both anthropology and law, receiving her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago and her law degree from Harvard Law School. Lauren is also currently writing a book based on collaborative conversations about creativity, intuition, spirituality, art, and culture with the singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco. The book is tentatively titled: The Spirit of Ani: Conversations with Ani DiFranco on Her Journeys in Spirituality, Music, and Freedom.
