Mwangi wa Gĩthĩnji is Associate Dean of the College of Social and Behavioural Sciences and founding Co-Director of the World Studies Interdisciplinary Project and Associate Professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He was Chairperson of the Five Colleges African Studies Council from 2014 to 2016. Previously he was Associate Professor of Economics and Chair of Africana Studies at Gettysburg College, Pennsylvania.
His research interests are in the Political Economy of Development, Stratification economics and the Decolonization of economics with particular attention to issues of class, gender, identity and income distribution in relation to agrarian transition, as well as the process of structural transformation in Africa. He is the author of Ten Millionaires and Ten Million Beggars: a study of inequality and development in Kenya and co-author of An Employment Targeted Plan for Kenya plus several articles and chapters. He is the co-editor of an interdisciplinary three volume work on decolonization entitled Decolonial Reconstellations which brings together work from a variety of disciplines and regions in an examination of what it means to decolonise knowledge and knowledge production.
In addition to his research Mwangi has been active in policy circles consulting with multi-lateral and national agencies and NGOs such as the UNDP, Economic Commission for Africa, Africa Center for Economic Transformation, and the Society for International development among others, on issues of development particularly with respect to Africa. He is a founding editor of the Journal of Stratification Economics, an Editor of the African Studies Review, Associate Editor of the Canadian Journal of Development Studies and on the Editorial Board of the Journal of African Development. He was previously an Associate Editor of Rethinking Marxism (2000-14)