Annals: Departmental reports and staff listings
SOAS
Department of Anthropology and Sociology, School of Oriental and African Studies, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG
T: 0207 898 4020; F: 020 7898 4699; E: Artsandhumanities(AT)soas.ac.uk
W: http://www.soas.ac.uk
Departmental report
We continued to recruit steadily to both our single and joint honours BA degrees, and to our seven MA programmes; however, from next year we are obliged to reduce BA numbers by about a fifth in order to meet revised recruitment targets if SOAS is not to face penalization for over-recruitment - an odd situation given a supposed government policy commitment to degree level education for 50% of school leavers.
As has been the case for about a decade now, recruitment to our MPhil/PhD programme is hampered by our ESRC recognition not being matched by any quota award. We rely heavily on recruitment of overseas students whose applications are less sensitive to ESRC policy. A pleasing outcome to the RAE this year, as well as endorsements from a seven-yearly department and programme review, and very high levels of students satisfaction with our teaching (98% in the latest survey), makes one wonder again about the wisdom of a policy that does not support UK or EU postgraduate research students wanting to study here. The policy is also at odds with the relative success enjoyed in securing RCUK research funding, which again suggests that thinking by ESRC can hardly be called ‘joined up’, since one might imagine that ESRC research funding indicated some capacity to supervise ESRC-funded research students.
We welcomed back Trevor Marchand, after three years in September, and John Campbell, after two years in January, on completion of ESRC-funded research projects in both cases. Unusually for this department, both had been engaged on fieldwork in UK. Trevor’s research project, ‘Building craft knowledge and apprenticeship in Britain’, brought his work on apprenticeship in the Middle East and West Africa closer to home with a study of fine woodworking; John had been tracking the fates of asylum-seekers from the Horn of Africa through the UK asylum system.
Two other members of staff had been away for a year: Gabi vom Bruck undertaking a biographic study of a Yemeni woman with support from the Leverhulme Foundation, and Ed Simpson completing an ESRC-funded project on natural disasters. David Mosse is on AHRC/ESRC-funded research leave in the current year working on a number of projects including Christianity in India, the political rights of India’s Dalit (untouchables), and relations between these. Magnus Marsden is making a series of briefer visits to Afghanistan with BA funding.
Gabi vom Bruck, Magnus Marsden, Parvathi Raman and Edward Simpson were promoted to Senior Lecturerships, and Harry West to a Professorship, all with effect from 2009-10.
Among our book-length publications, Trevor Marchand’s The Masons of Djenné (Indiana University Press, 2009) is about to appear, as is Lola Martinez Remaking Kurosawa: translations and permutations in global cinema (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Otherwise, 2008-9 saw publication of an usually large number edited works, both books and Special Issues of journals. Enduring Socialism: explorations of revolution and transformation, restoration and continuation (Berghahn, 2009), edited by Paru Raman and Harry West, was based on a seminar series held at SOAS to which staff in addition to the editors contributed chapters (John Campbell, Jakob Klein, Kevin Latham). Travclling Rationalities: the anthropology of expert knowledge and professionals in international development (Berghahn, 2009) edited by David Mosse is about to appear.
Four Special Issues of journals were published during the year: Food: Memory and Politics a Special Issue of South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 31(1) co-edited by Caroline and Filippo Osella (with a conclusion by Jakob Klein). With Ian Harper, Paru Raman edited Diaspora and Disease a Special Issue of International Migration 46(5) based on a conference held at SOAS. With Projit B. Mukharij, Lola Martinez edited Football: from England to the World a Special Issue of Soccer and Society 9(2) which was also published as a book (by Taylor and Francis, 2008). Kai Kresse and Trevor Marchand edited a Special Issue of AFRICA (on Knowledge in Practice: expertise and the transmission of knowledge (79)1 which likewise will be available in a book edition (by Edinburgh University Press for the International African Institute, 2009).
Further edited works are in the pipeline: Trevor Marchand is editing the next Special Issue of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. While Kevin Latham convened a conference in September 2008 under the title Documenting the Beijing Olympics, which will appear as a Special Issue of the journal Sport and Society. Kevin has ESRC funding for further work on the Beijing Olympics and new media.
Among other conferences hosted at SOAS in what has been a busy year we were particularly gratified by Exploring and Expanding the Boundaries of Research Methods (October/November 2008), since this conference was convened by two of our doctoral students Bobby McKenzie and Mira Mohsini, largely for postgraduate students, and attracted over 150 registrations. Support is gratefully acknowledged from the AHRC and RAI (as well as the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at SOAS).
John Campbell collaborated with the University of London’s Centre of African Studies in holding an ESRC-sponsored conference Seeking Refuge: caught between bureaucracy, lawyers and public indifference? (April 2009).
The two research centres based in the department enjoyed very active years, each of them running seminars throughout the year. For further information on their activities visit:
http://www.soas.ac.uk/foodstudies/ and http://www.soas.ac.uk/migrationdiaspora/
The Food Studies Centre and the Centre for Migration and Diaspora, collaborated with the University of Sussex, when Paru Raman and Monica Janowski ran a workshop on Food and Migration (February 2009). Papers are available in PDF form http://www.soas.ac.uk/migrationdiaspora/seminarsevents/food_migration_abstracts/ and will be published in two journal issues, one of which, edited by Monica Janowski, will be in Food and Foodways.
The third SOAS Food Forum Distinguished Lecture was given this year by Dr. Suman Sahai, geneticist, and founder and convener of Gene Campaign. The lecture, co-sponsored by the SOAS Centre for South Asian Studies, was entitled The Role of Agrobiodiversity in Food and Livelihoods for the Rural Poor.
We are looking forward to Magnus Marsden and Kostas Retsikas’s conference on Thirty years of the Anthropology of Islam: Retrospect and Prospect, to be held here in early July 2009. The conference is one of a number of strategic initiatives we have been making on the anthropology of Islam, which included the launch of new courses this year at both BA and MA levels.
Our permanent staffing looks to be unchanged next year, and we are very fortunate in the teaching support we receive from our Visiting Professors and Readers, and Teaching Fellows, as well as the research initiatives led by our different categories of Research Associates. Steve Hughes has a Senior Research Fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies for next year and will be in India to study the distribution networks of Tamil film. David Mosse awaits the outcome of an ESRC application and might also be absent. Gabi vom Bruck will continue her work on Yemeni biography during sabbatical leave for two terms, while Kevin Latham has a term of sabbatical leave for his work on new media in China.
Over the summer vacation we are looking forward to a complete upgrade of the Helen Kanitkar Library (our departmental library) which will see the addition of a suite of computers for postgraduate research students to add to the wi-fi already available to those who work on their laptops there.
Teaching staff 2009-10
John Campbell (DPhil, Sussex; Senior Lecturer) Development, civil society, ethnicity and nationalism; East and NE Africa; refugees and asylum in the UK.
Christopher Davis (PhD, Chicago; Lecturer) Medical anthropology, interpretative anthropology, ethnographic writing, philosophical anthropology; Central Africa
Richard Fardon (PhD, UCL, FBA; Professor) West African politics, ethnicity and religion, both contemporary and in the recent past; theory in anthropology, as well as the history of, particularly British, anthropology; West African material culture and performance.
Stephen Hughes (PhD, Chicago; Lecturer) Popular cinema, media theory, historical anthropology and visual anthropology; India, especially the Tamil-speaking south, and Sri Lanka. Leave of absence 2009-10.
Jakob Klein (PhD, SOAS; Lecturer) Food and eating, culinary traditions, consumption; China (South).
Kevin Latham (PhD, SOAS; Senior Lecturer) Chinese theatre, popular culture, television and media; Hong Kong and Guangdong Province (People’s Republic of China). On sabbatical leave in term 1.
Trevor Marchand (B. Architecture, McGill, PhD, SOAS; Senior Lecturer) building-craft knowledge, apprenticeship, architecture and anthropology; Near and Middle East, Yemen and Mali
Magnus Marsden (PhD, Cambridge; Senior Lecturer) Social anthropology of Pakistan, Central Asia and the Middle East; anthropology of religion (especially Islam), the interaction between religious and political transformations within and beyond South Asia and the Muslim world, as well as the study of transnational identity formations.
Dolores P Martinez (DPhil, Oxford; Reader) Popular culture in the media, anthropology of tourism, ritual, gender relations; Japan.
David Mosse (DPhil, Oxford; Professor) Caste, religion, ritual, vernacular Christianity, environmental history, common property resources, indigenous irrigation, participatory rural development, aid agencies, anthropology of development; India, Tamil Nadu, adivasi (tribal) Western India. Research leave 2009-10, dependent on ESRC funding.
Caroline Osella (PhD, LSE; Reader) Hierarchy and distinction, Islamic reformism, modernity, gender/sexuality, consumption; South Asia, Kerala and Malayali Gulf diaspora
Johan Pottier (DPhil, Sussex; Professor) Rural development, globalisation and food security, ethnic conflict, post-conflict rehabilitation; Rwanda and Eastern DRC (formerly Zaire).
Parvathi Raman (PhD, SOAS; Senior Lecturer) Indian and South African identity; African and Asian communities in London
Kostas Retsikas (PhD, Edinburgh; Lecturer) South-east Asian anthropology, notably Indonesia, Java, migration, ethnicity and the body
Edward Simpson (PhD, LSE; Senior Lecturer) Islam in South Asia; politics, ethnography, and society of Gujarat; social theory and the western Indian Ocean; the ethnography of reconstruction after catastrophic natural disasters
Gabriele vom Bruck (PhD, LSE; Senior Lecturer) Middle East with emphasis on the Arabian Peninsular (especially Yemen): elites, memory, gender, religion and politics. On sabbatical leave terms 1 & 2.
Harry G West (PhD, Wisconsin; Professor) Southern Africa, especially Mozambique; political anthropology; violence and the state; revolutionary socialism and post-socialist societies; traditional authority; sorcery; healing. Anthropology of Food: agriculture, food, and state policy; food safety and regulation; food and international trade; food and cultural heritage.
Visiting Professors: Peter Loizos (PhD, LSE); Tom Selwyn (PhD, SOAS)
Visiting Readers (provisional): Audrey Cantlie (PhD, London), Emma Crewe (PhD, Edinburgh)
Teaching Fellows (provisional):Dr Richard Axelby; DrAnne Mette Fisker-Nielsen;Dr Monica Janowski; Ms Mahnaz Marashi;Dr Louella Matsunaga; Dr Deena Newman; Dr Damian Walter
Anthropologists in other SOAS departments
Mark Hobart (PhD, SOAS; Professor, Centre for Media and Film Studies) Critical media and cultural studies; philosophical issues in the human sciences; ethnography of television production and reception; South East Asian anthropology
Keith Howard (PhD, Belfast; Professor, Department of Music) Culture and society, ethnomusicology; Korea. Leave of absence 2009-10.
Deniz Kandiyoti (PhD, LSE; Professor, Department of Development Studies) Gender and development, gender, Islam and the state, feminist theory; Middle East and Central Asia
Cosimo Zene (PhD, SOAS; Senior Lecturer, Department of the Study of Religions) Anthropology of religion, theory and the study of religions, continental philosophy, intercultural and inter-religious dialogue, minorities, mysticism and heresy, non-western Christianity, Mediterranean anthropology; South Asia, Bangladesh, Sardinia
Postdoctoral research fellows
Rachel Wrangham (PhD, Mellon Research Fellow) – on maternity leave to January 2010
Emeritus Professors
Lionel Caplan (PhD, SOAS)
Adrian Mayer (PhD, LSE)
J D Y Peel (PhD DLit, London, FBA)
Paul Spencer (DPhil, Oxford)
Richard Tapper (PhD, SOAS)
Professorial Research Associates
Raymond Apthorpe (DPhil, Oxford)
Jeremy Keenan (PhD, Exeter)
Tom Selwyn (PhD, SOAS; also Visiting Professor)
Research associates (including those in the Department’s Research Centres)
Nematollah Fazeli (PhD, SOAS)
Hermione Harris (PhD, SOAS)
Monica Janowski (PhD, LSE; also Teaching Fellow) – Food Centre
David Marsden (PhD, Durham)
Hudita Nura Mustafa (PhD, Harvard) – Centre for Migration and Diaspora
Anna Portisch (PhD, SOAS)
Jakob Rigi (PhD, SOAS)
Stuart Thompson (BA Durham)
Shelagh Weir (PhD, London)
Postdoctoral research associates
Emma-Jayne Abbots (PhD, Goldsmiths) – Food Centre
Nuno Domingos (PhD, SOAS) – Food Centre
Nicola Frost (PhD, London) – Food Centre
Administration
Nita Parmar (BA, North London) Faculty Officer, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, SOAS (np9@soas.ac.uk)
Special resources and facilities
Teaching in African and Asian languages; SOAS National Library for African and Asian Studies; regional Centres, disciplinary Centres (including Food, and Migration and Diaspora within the Department); specialized MA programmes.