Annals: Departmental reports and staff listings
Goldsmiths College
Goldsmiths College, University of London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW
T: 0207 919 7800; F: 0207 919 7813; E: anthropology(AT)gold.ac.uk
W: http://www.gold.ac.uk/anthropology/
Departmental report
The anthropology department at Goldsmiths College has a lively, active research culture and is one of the leading centres for anthropological research into the politics of economy and of culture (including visual anthropology) and, regionally, on Europe. We achieved a rating of 5 in both the 1996 and 2001 Research Assessment Exercises. Members of academic staff have carried out research in Latin America, the USA, the Caribbean, several regions in Africa, Turkey, Central and South Asia, Oceania and Europe. Our research groups share a common interest in close historical analysis and engaged practice. Research-led teaching programmes complement others in London as well as building on distinctive features of Goldsmiths. We offer four undergraduate programmes and six taught postgraduates. There is also an intercollegiate Masters in area studies (Latin America), two postgraduate masters in research, and MPhil/PhD programmes in both visual and social anthropology.
These programmes are associated with a variety of workshops, conferences and seminars including, in 2007-08, screenings and talks by Michael Taussig and Gavin Searle; the final conference in the ESRC-supported Rethinking Economies series, seminar series on 'The Greening of Social Theory', 'Art, Work, Life' and 'Anthropology and Health Practice'. Our student Anthropology Society also hosts regular events, including the forthcoming International Student Ethnography Film Festival (November 2008, see www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/anthropology/anthro-society.php).
Recent PhDs have been completed on topics as diverse as HIV treatment among the poor in Brazil, contemporary tattooing, black white relationships in Britain and ethnobotany in Venezuela. Advanced students at Goldsmiths organise their own workshops annually with staff support. Commonly, these include researchers from cognate disciplines and other anthropologists, as in the one-day Ethnography beyond Anthropology (2007).
The department currently has 16 permanent members of teaching staff and three administrative staff. Emeritus staff include Professor Pat Caplan, Professor Brian Morris and Dr Nici Nelson and the department also hosts a dozen active visiting research fellows and postdoctoral fellows at any one time. We have approximately 250 undergraduate, 100 MA and 40 research postgraduate students.
Staff
Dr Catherine Alexander (PhD) Urban anthropology, (post-)socialism, the state, institutions; Britain, Central Asia, Turkey
Dr Jean Besson (PhD) Land tenure, kinship, identity, development, gender and religion in Jamaica and the Eastern Caribbean
Dr Rebecca Cassidy (PhD) Human-animal relationships, gambling in London, horseracing in Kentucky and Newmarket
Professor Sophie Day (PhD) Spirit possession; gender and religion in Ladakh and North India; sex workers in London
Dr Victoria Goddard (PhD) Gender and feminism with particular reference to the Mediterranean area and Latin America
Dr David Graeber (PhD) The nature of power; value theory; the principles of direct democracy and direct action; anthropology and anarchism; the history of debt
Professor Keith Hart (PhD) The informal economy, movement and identity; Africa and the African diaspora
Dr Thomas Kirsch (PhD) Religion, Christianity; ethnography of reading, visual anthropology; human safety, security and crime prevention; medical anthropology; southern Africa
Dr Massimiliano Mollona (PhD) Labour, globalisation and de-industrialisation in Europe
Professor Stephen Nugent (PhD) Ethnohistory and peasant economies, visual anthropology; Brazilian Amazonia
Dr Frances Pine: Kinship and gender, history, memory and life stories, movement, migration and work (including the informal economy); Poland
Dr Roger Sansi-Roca (PhD) Anthropology of art, sorcery, material culture, cultural policy, history; Black Atlantic, Brazil, international contemporary art world
Dr Alpa Shah (PhD) Anthropology of the state and politics, democracy, development and the environment, revolutionary movements and violence, migration; Jharkand, South Asia
Dr Emma Tarlo, Visual culture (including dress, textiles and fashion), colonialism, nationalism, regionalism, caste and gender politics, urban anthropology, anthropology of religion, anthropology of space and cyberspace; India and Britain
Dr Sari Wastell (PhD) Legal anthropology, social theory, kingship, sovereignty, custom, international humanitarian law and war crimes prosecutions, time politics and historical consciousness; Swaziland, Bosnia, Euskadi
Dr Chris Wright (PhD) Visual anthropology, including photography, visual culture, aesthetics, film and ethno-history
