We’re delighted to welcome Professor Alpa Shah to deliver the ASA Firth Lecture 2024. She will discuss her brand-new book The Incarcerations: BK-16 and the Search for Democracy in India, which pulls back the curtain on Indian democracy to tell the remarkable and chilling story in which 16 human rights defenders (the BK-16) – professors, lawyers, journalists, poets – have been imprisoned, without credible evidence and without trial, as Maoist terrorists.

See Me / Hear Me is the first-ever drag show created, designed and directed using eye-movement. It explores the incredible life and art of Sarah Ezekiel, a paralysed visual artist with Motor Neurone Disease, who communicates through eye-movement. Working with anthropologists, drag artists and a composer, the show describes the extraordinary lived experience of being “locked-in”.

PeopleFest closes with a bang in conversation with Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller. Hosted by Dr Rupert Cox, the event will highlight some of Jeremy’s films and collaborations. Dr Katie Smith and students from Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester will ask how his playful explorations of British identity might connect to themes in anthropological research.