Annals: Departmental reports and staff listings
University of Glasgow
Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Applied Social Sciences, University of Glasgow, 40 Bute Gardens, Adam Smith Building, Glasgow G12 8RT
T: 0141 330 5981; F: 0141 330 3554
W: http//www.gla.ac.uk/departments/sociology/index.htm
Departmental report
Undergraduate teaching
Social anthropology has been hugely popular with undergraduate students. There are 16 sociology members of staff and there are 2 social anthropology members of staff. In the brief period when we moved from two to three social anthropologists we were able to offer a level one course to 260 students, a level two course to 60-80 students and a joint honours degree programme. Now that one social anthropologist (Simon Charsley) has retired and not been replaced we are unable to maintain this programme. As a consequence our level one and two courses have been absorbed into joint sociology and anthropology courses which are predominantly sociology. The joint honours programme continues.
Postgraduate teaching
- An interdisciplinary very successful (anthropology and sociology, but mostly anthropology) taught Masters programme in Global Movements, Social Justice and Sustainability, began in September 2006.
- Partners in ESRC-funded Scottish Programme of Advanced Training in Social Anthropology for PhD students: jointly convening the two-week pre- and post-fieldwork methods training courses in the Spring of 2007 and 2008.
Social anthropology is recognised by our (sociology) external examiners as contributing to academic excellence. One examiner stated that:
‘A particular strength that is very evident in students' work is a double combination: firstly, the combination of the disciplines of Sociology and Anthropology; and secondly, the combination of both classical and contemporary perspectives. Students' work demonstrates an ability to move fluently between disciplines and registers, drawing from and combining perspectives and ideas. This, to me, would seem to indicate not only that these individual disciplines are taught very well at this Department, but that they are taught in a way that is complementary to one another, and that students benefit from the reflexive and recursive opportunities produced by this combination. This interdisciplinary fluency is no easy pedagogical objective to accomplish, and I expect there may be some tensions and difficulties in the transition period. These are inevitable, and unavoidable, but the rewards both in terms of the life of the Department and in terms of students' experience are excellent and evident.’
Staff and research
Nicole Bourque is currently researching ‘Corporate Strategy Episodes’ and conversion to Islam (religious change in South America; conversion to Islam; Islam in Scotland, use of ritual theory in the analysis of Corporate Strategy Episodes).
Justin Kenrick is currently researching Scottish land reform and indigenous peoples’ rights (conservation and development projects in Central Africa; the politics of indigenous peoples’ rights; service provision for marginalised groups in Scotland; sustainability and global justice).
Robert Gibb (Lecturer in Sociology) is co-convener with Justin of the MSc in Global Movements, Social Justice and Sustainability. Together with Professor Anthony Good (Social Anthropology, University of Edinburgh), Robert has secured an Anthropology AHRC large research project award to examine the processes – and problems – of cultural translation involved in converting asylum applicants’ accounts of persecution into legal language by lawyers in France and the UK.
Other Glasgow University staff with a direct input into social anthropology in the department are Panos Dendrinos (masculinity and homosexuality in contemporary Greece) and Harvie Ferguson (Professor of Sociology but with broader interests which include anthropology), and also Alison Phipps (in the Department of Education) and Danny Wight (in the Medical Research Unit).