Annals: Departmental reports and staff listings

School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)

Department of Anthropology and Sociology, School of Oriental and African Studies, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG
T: 0207 898 4020; F: 020 7898 4699; E: Artsandhumanities(AT)soas.ac.uk
W: http://www.soas.ac.uk

Departmental report

Two new School-wide Research Centres were launched in the Department this year: the SOAS Food Studies Centre (www.soas.ac.uk/foodstudies) chaired by Harry West and Jakob Klein; and the Centre for Migration and Diaspora Studies (www.soas.ac.uk/migrationdiaspora) chaired by Paru Raman. A packed lecture on food and diaspora, given by Professor Sidney Mintz in SOAS’s largest lecture theatre, handily pointed to the links between them while inaugurating both. The lecture also initiated an annual distinguished lecture series, which will be published in the journal Food, Culture and Society. The two Centres will function as focuses of both research and postgraduate teaching.

The capacity to provide relatively comprehensive ethnographic coverage of Africa and Asia is one of the distinctive features of the SOAS department. We are currently offering our full, historic range of courses (China, Japan, East Africa, West Africa, Near and Middle East, South Asia, South East Asia). Drs Magnus Marsden and Edward Simpson joined us in 2007, strengthening our regional expertise in Central and South Asia, as well as adding to thematic focuses of departmental research such as the anthropology of Islam, diaspora and migration, disaster and development. Dr Jakob Klein’s position as lecturer, with particular interests in China and food systems, was made permanent at the same time. We are sorry to be losing Dr Adam Chau to a position in Cambridge in 2008, but have enjoyed his two years with us and wish him well for the future. Having substantially rebuilt the department following retirements over the last decade or so, we are now seeing a cohort enter seniority. Three staff were promoted in 2007 (David Mosse to a Professorship; Caroline Osella and Harry West to Readerships); Kevin Latham will be promoted from 2008 (to a Senior Lectureship).

Recruitment to our BA and MA degrees has continued to exceed our targets. We added further language degrees to the large number of combined undergraduate degrees already available at SOAS (listed on our website). The two MA programmes launched in 2006  (one in the Anthropology of Food, the other an ESRC-recognised MaRes), recruited well, as did the existing five programmes (Social Anthropology, Anthropology of Development, Medical Anthropology, Anthropology of Media, Migration and Diaspora). MPhil and PhD student numbers have risen gently, and we continue to be reliant on overseas students in the absence of ESRC quota awards which would attract larger numbers of UK applicants. We are now eligible to compete for pool awards, and we continue to hope that the ESRC will rethink the historic quota system which has marginalised the country’s largest centre of Asian and African expertise for so long – surely not a sensible use of taxpayers’ money.

Benedetta Rossi transferred the last three months of her ESRC Fellowship to the University of Liverpool where we were delighted that she landed an RCUK Fellowship. Rachel Wrangham (Mellon Fellow) will return part-time to her position after maternity leave. Martyn Rogers completed his year as an ESRC Fellow. I am writing this before learning whether any new Fellows might be joining us in 2008-09.

Trevor Marchand entered the final year of his three-year ESRC Research Fellowship on ‘Building craft knowledge and apprenticeship in Britain’, and  John Campbell reached the mid-point of his two year ESRC-funded project on the UK asylum system as it is experienced by immigrants from the countries of the Horn of Africa. Trevor also found time to act as anthropological consultant as well as co-producer for the well-received documentary film Future of Mud (Director Susan Vogel), based on his fieldwork with Djenne masons in Mali. Gabi vom Bruck was away all year on Leverhulme-funded research leave to study Yemeni biography.  Ed Simpson took research leave to complete the ESRC-funded comparative study of natural disasters begun while he was at Goldsmiths. New research funding was gained by David Mosse (AHRC/ESRC, who will complete his longstanding project on Indian religion in 2008-09), Kevin Latham (an ESRC funded study of the Beijing Olympics which continues his concern with Chinese new media and identity) and Harry West (BA, for research initiatives on local foods in the global marketplace).

Among our book-length publications, Harry West’s Kupilikula shared the 2007 Amaury Talbot prize (in addition to its commendation by the judges of the Herskovits prize); Harry also published a second monograph on Mozambique Ethnographic Sorcery (Chicago 2007). Kevin Latham saw his comprehensive study of Pop Culture China! Media, Arts and Lifestyle (Clio 2007) published at almost 400 pages in length. Ed Simpson’s Muslim Society and the Western Indian Ocean (Routledge 2006) was published before he joined us from Goldsmiths. Caroline Osella co-authored Men and Masculinities in South India (with Filippo, Anthem 2006). Richard Fardon completed his series of studies of material culture with Lela in Bali (Berghahn 2006) and Fusions (Afriscopes 2007; the second volume of Chamba Arts in Comparison, following Column to Volume, Afriscopes 2005). Of our edited books: Consuming China (Routledge 2006) gave particular pleasure because it derived from a SOAS seminar and was edited by three current and past staff members (Kevin Latham, Stuart Thompson and Jakob Klein). Lola Martinez edited a four volume reference work Japanese Culture and Society (Routledge 2007), while Gabi vom Bruck co-edited The Anthropology of Names and Naming (with B. Bodenhorn, Cambridge 2006).

In addition to those on funded research leave (David Mosse, John Campbell), several staff are due internally funded sabbaticals in 2008-09: Lola Martinez for the year (following a stint as Associate Dean of Research), Stephen Hughes, Jakob Klein and Johan Pottier for a term. We shall rely on our several excellent, and in many cases long-serving, Teaching Fellows. SOAS Human Resources has finally completed an agreement with the Unions which will allow all of their contracts to be put on a consistent basis. Something we have long advocated.

Teaching staff 2008-09

John Campbell (DPhil, Sussex; Senior Lecturer) Development, civil society, ethnicity and nationalism; East and NE Africa; refugees and asylum in the UK. On research leave until January 2009.

Adam Yuet Chau (PhD, Stanford; Lecturer) popular religion, politics, hosting and event productions, public writing, performance, the Indonesian Chinese diasporas; China (leaving September 2008)

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. On sabbatical in term 2.

Jakob Klein (PhD, SOAS; Lecturer) Food and eating, culinary traditions, consumption; China (South). On sabbatical in term 2.

Kevin Latham (PhD, SOAS; Senior Lecturer) Chinese theatre, popular culture, television and media; Hong Kong and Guangdong Province (People’s Republic of China)

Trevor Marchand (B. Architecture, McGill, PhD, SOAS; Senior Lecturer) building-craft knowledge, apprenticeship, architecture and anthropology; Near and Middle East, Yemen and Mali

Magnus Marsden (PhD, Cambridge; 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.

Dolores P Martinez (DPhil, Oxford; Senior Lecturer) Popular culture in the media, anthropology of tourism, ritual, gender relations; Japan. On sabbatical 2008-09.

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. On research leave 2008-09.

Caroline Osella (PhD, LSE; Reader) Hierarchy and distinction, Islamic reformism, modernity, gender/sexuality, consumption; South Asia, Kerala and Malayali Gulf diaspora

J D Y Peel (PhD DLit, London, FBA; Research Professor) Social theory, history and anthropology, religious conversions and cultural change; West Africa

Johan Pottier (DPhil, Sussex; Professor) Rural development, globalisation and food security, ethnic conflict, post-conflict rehabilitation; Rwanda and Eastern DRC (formerly Zaire). On sabbatical term 2.

Parvathi Raman (PhD, SOAS; 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

Edward Simpson (PhD, LSE; 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

Gabriele vom Bruck (PhD, LSE; Lecturer) Middle East with emphasis on the Arabian Peninsular (especially Yemen): elites, memory, gender, religion and politics

Harry G West (PhD Wisconsin; Reader) 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 Reader: Audrey Cantlie (PhD, London)

Teaching Fellows (provisional): Dr Anne Mette Fisker-Nielsen; Professor Peter Loizos; Dr Monica Janowski; Ms Mahnaz Marashi; Dr Louella Matsunaga; Dr Deena Newman; Dr James Staples; Dr Meera Venkatachalam

Anthropologists in other SOAS departments

Mark Hobart (PhD, SOAS; Senior Lecturer, Media Studies) Critical media and cultural studies; philosophical issues in the human sciences; ethnography of television production and reception; South East Asian anthropology

Keith Howard (PhD, Belfast; Professor, Department of Music) Culture and society, ethnomusicology; Korea

David Hughes (PhD, Michigan; Senior Lecturer, Department of Music) Ethnomusicology, folk and theatre music, music and linguistics, gamelan music; Java, Japan

Deniz Kandiyoti (PhD, LSE; Reader, Department of Development Studies) Gender and development, gender, Islam and the state, feminist theory; Middle East and Central Asia

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

Postdoctoral research fellows

Rachel Wrangham (PhD, Mellon Research Fellow)

Professorial research and emeritus associates

Raymond Apthorpe (DPhil, Oxford; Professorial Research Associate)

Lionel Caplan (PhD, SOAS; Emeritus Professor)

Eleanor Holroyd (PhD, RN, RM; Professorial Research Associate)

Adrian Mayer (PhD, LSE; Emeritus Professor)

John Middleton (DPhil, Oxford; Emeritus Professor)

Paul Spencer (DPhil, Oxford; Emeritus Professor)

Richard Tapper (PhD, SOAS; Emeritus Professor)

Research associates (including those in the Department’s Research Centres)

Nematollah Fazeli (PhD, SOAS)

Hermione Harris (PhD, SOAS)

Monica Janowski (PhD, LSE)

Stuart Thompson (BA Durham)

Iain Walker (PhD, Sydney)

Shelagh Weir (PhD, London)

Postdoctoral associate

Anna Portisch (PhD, SOAS)

Administration

Nita Parmar (BA, North London) Faculty Officer, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, SOAS (bp9(AT)soas.ac.uk)

Special resources and facilities

Teaching in African and Asian languages; SOAS National Library for African and Asian Studies; regional Centres.