ASA18: Sociality, matter, and the imagination: re-creating Anthropology

18-21 September 2018, Examination Schools, University of Oxford

The Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth’s 2018 conference was jointly hosted by the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography (SAME) of the University of Oxford, including the Pitt Rivers Museum, and the Department of Social Sciences, Oxford Brookes University. The conference invited participants from all areas of anthropology and archaeology, aiming to encourage debate as widely as possible, across socio-cultural, material, visual, biological, forensic, cognitive, evolutionary, and linguistic fields. With 740 academics attending, with 82 panels and 13 labs spanning all four fields and beyond the discipline, it achieved this, while being the largest ASA conference to-date. Thanks to all those who contributed to making this a memorable, enjoyable and intellectually diverse event. Videos of the keynotes will be posted here shortly.

Keynote and semi-plenary speakers were Melissa Leach (IDS, Sussex), Caitlin DeSilvey (Exeter), Mike Rowlands (UCL), Anna Grimshaw(Emory), Alessandro Duranti (UCLA), and Rita Astuti (LSE). There was a debate on evolution and morality featuring Oliver Scott Curry (Oxford), Mark Alfano (Delft University of Technology, Australian Catholic University), Soumhya Venkatesan (Manchester), and Jo Cook (UCL). Ian Hodder (Stanford) delivered the Firth Lecture on 'The Paradox of the Long Term: Human Evolution and Entanglement'. Rita Astuti delivered the closing keynote on 21 September. Read the keynote abstracts.

In addition to conference papers, participants from all fields of anthropology presented work in a range of media including film, sound, performance, photography, and drawing. There were exhibitions, laboratories, and other experimental formats in the Pitt Rivers Museum and elsewhere. Contributions to the conference are organised according to the four themes outlined here.

Organising committee

• Jason Danely, Senior Lecturer in the Anthropology of Japan, Oxford Brookes University
• David Gellner, Professor of Social Anthropology, Head of Department, SAME (Chair)
• Chris Gosden, Professor of European Archaeology, Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford
• Elizabeth Hallam, Research Associate, SAME, and Editor of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
• Clare Harris, Professor of Visual Anthropology, SAME; and Curator for Asian Collections, Pitt Rivers Museum
• Dan Hicks, Professor of Contemporary Archaeology, School of Archaeology, and Curator of Archaeology, Pitt Rivers Museum
• Catherine Hill, Professor of Anthropology, Oxford Brookes University
• Jeremy MacClancy, Professor of Anthropology, Oxford Brookes University
• Laura Rival, Professor of Anthropology of Development, Oxford Department of International Development
• Ramon Sarró, Associate Professor in the Social Anthropology of Africa, SAME
• David Zeitlyn, Professor of Social Anthropology, SAME

Contact

Direct any enquiries to conference(at)theasa.org.