Annals: Departmental reports and staff listings
SOAS
Departmental report 2011/12
Students Applications to our single and joint honours BA degrees remain high regardless of having raised our entry grades to AAA. The eight MA programmes saw recruitment in 2011/12 fall slightly to approximately 80 from a peak last year of over 100. This fall may reflect, among other things, a tightened job market. The department was successful in its bid for ESRC recognition as a member in the Bloomsbury DTC consortium; we now have at least one funded studentship each year under this scheme. Our MPhil/PhD programme continues to recruit well among overseas students.
For information on Open Days and other opportunities for potential undergraduate and postgraduate students to visit the campus students should see www.soas.ac.uk/admissions/ug/opendays and www.soas.ac.uk/admissions/pg/openevenings.
Research Awards Of the larger awards: Kostas Retsikas is undertaking fieldwork in Indonesia as a result of his three year ESRC award to study charities in Indonesia; and he will be on research leave until October 2013. Ed Simpson obtained a three year ESRC-funded grant to undertake a re-study of three important anthropological village studies undertaken in the 1950s. The grant funded the appointment of three post-doctoral fellows who are about to leave for fieldwork. Ed is on research leave during terms 2 and 3 for the next three years. Magnus Marsden will spend the next academic year undertaking fieldwork in Central Asia; his work is funded by a grant from The Leverhulme Foundation. Paru Raman has recently obtained three years of funding from the Marie Curie Foundation to fund doctoral research and related activities under the Centre for Migration and Diaspora.
Facilities The Helen Kanitkar Library and Research Centre with its suite of computers and upgraded wi-fi continues to provide an important academic and social site for our students.
Exhibitions, Conferences, Seminars Richard Fardon was co-curator of the exhibition of the same name which opened at the Fowler Museum in LA, before travelling to the Smithsonian Museum of African Art in Washington. Its further itinerary takes it to the Cantor Center in Stanford, before opening at the Musee du Quai Branly in November 2012.
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/
Additionally, we convened a departmental seminar program and specialist seminars in anthropology of development and an ethnographic film series. Other events have been organized under the rubric of the ‘London Anthropology Forum’ which has been convened discussions of the ‘Arab Spring and ‘Being an Anthropologist in Academia and beyond’ see: http://www.soas.ac.uk/anthropology/events/08nov2011-being-an-anthropologist-in-academia-and-beyond.html
Publications Among our book-length publications are:
Simpson, R. ed. 2011. Society and history of Gujarat since 1800: A select bibliography of the English and European language sources. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan.
Berns, Marla C. and Fardon, Richard and Kasfir, Sidney Littlefield. 2011. Central Nigeria Unmasked: Arts of the Benue River Valley. Los Angeles: Fowler Museum at UCLA.
Tom Selwyn, an associate of the department has, with M. Kousis and D. Clark, co-edited. Contentious Politics of the Mediterranean: Essays in honour of Charles Tilly, New York, Berghahn.
Staff Our permanent staffing remains unchanged. We are indebted to a large body of part-time staff (Visiting Professors and Readers, Senior Teaching Fellows, Teaching Fellows and Graduate Teaching Assistants and Research Associates) that bring our complement to well over forty teaching staff. David Mosse will succeed John Campbell as Head of Department in mid-August 2012. John, Magnus, Ed and Kostas will be on sabbatical leave all of next year, and a number of other staff have single term sabbatical leave entitlements (as indicated below).
Teaching staff 2010-11
For later updates, see http://www.soas.ac.uk/anthropology/staff/
John Campbell (DPhil, Sussex; Senior Lecturer) Development, civil society, ethnicity and nationalism; East and NE Africa; refugees and asylum in the UK. Research leave 2012/13.
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.
Jakob Klein (PhD, SOAS; Lecturer) Food and eating, culinary traditions, consumption; China (South).
Kevin Latham (PhD, SOAS; Senior Lecturer) Chinese media, theatre and popular culture; consumption, new media and journalism; PRC and Hong Kong.
Trevor Marchand (B. Architecture, McGill, PhD, SOAS; Professor) West Africa, South Arabia and the United Kingdom: building-craft knowledge and apprenticeship; embodied cognition and communication; architectural conservation and the built environment. Research leave term 1 AY 2012/13.
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. Sabbatical 2012/13.
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.
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). Research leave term 1 AY 2012/13.
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. ESRC-funded researches leave 2012/13.
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. ESRC funded leave terms 2 & 3 AY 2012/13.
Gabriele vom Bruck (PhD, LSE; Senior Lecturer) Middle East with emphasis on the Arabian Peninsular (especially Yemen): elites, memory, gender, religion and politics.
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: J.D.Y. Peel (PhD DLit, London, FBA); Tom Selwyn (PhD, SOAS)
Visiting Readers: Audrey Cantlie (PhD, London), Emma Crewe (PhD, Edinburgh).
Senior Teaching Fellows: Dr Richard Axelby; Dr Anne Mette Fisker-Nielsen; Dr Gustaaf Houtman; Dr Monica Janowski; Ms Mahnaz Marashi; Dr Damian Walter; Dr. Emma Crewe; Dr. David Henig.
Teaching Fellow: Dr. R Gholami Reza; Dr. A. Sousa Santos.
Graduate Teaching Assistants: Dr. A Hoque; Ms D. Ibanez-Tirado; Ms T. Baum; Ms S. Simpson, Ms D. Trentini; Mr. H. Lai; Mr A. Quereshi; Mr. L. Achilli; Ms. P Dhital; Mr. I. Cherstich; Ms. S. Buchberger.
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. Mark retires this year.
Keith Howard (PhD, Belfast; Professor, Department of Music) Culture and society, ethnomusicology; Korea.
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.
Emeritus Professors
Lionel Caplan (PhD, SOAS)
Adrian Mayer (PhD, LSE)
David Parkin (PhD)
J D Y Peel (PhD DLit, London, FBA; also Visiting Professor)
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 of the Department
Asad Ahmed (PhD)
Nematollah Fazeli (PhD, SOAS)
Caroline Ifeka (PhD)
Mariagiulia Grassilli (PhD)
Hermione Harris (PhD, SOAS)
David Marsden (PhD, Durham)
Reza Nejad (PhD)
Anna Portisch (PhD, SOAS)
Professor Mimi Sharma
Stuart Thompson (BA Durham)
Shelagh Weir (PhD, London)
Research Associate of the Food Studies Centre
Monica Janowski (PhD, LSE; also Senior Teaching Fellow)
Postdoctoral research associates
Emma-Jayne Abbots (PhD, Goldsmiths)
Julie Botticello (PhD, UCL)
Nuno Domingos (PhD, SOAS)
Nicola Frost (PhD, Goldsmiths)
Defne Karaosmanoglu (PhD, McGill)
Professorial Research Associates
Henry Bernstein (MSc Sociology, London School of Economics)
Anne Murcott (PhD Sociology, University of Wales)
Sami Zubaida (MA Sociology, Leicester University)
Emma-Jayne Abbots (PhD Anthropology, Goldsmiths)
Manpreet Janeja (PhD Social Anthropology, Cambridge)
Monica Janowski (PhD, London School of Economics)
Gavin Whitelaw (PhD Sociocultural Anthropology, Yale)
Post-Doctoral Research Fellows
Nicola Frost (PhD, University of London)
Elizabeth Hull (PhD Anthropology, London School of Economics)
Marina Marouda (PhD Social Anthropology, University of Edinburgh)
Post-Doctoral Research Associates
Julie Botticello (PhD Anthropology, UCL)
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.