Annals: Departmental reports and staff listings
Cambridge University
Department of Social Anthropology, Free School Lane, Cambridge CB2 3RF
Tel: 01223 334599; Fax 01223 335993;
email: socanth-admin@lists.cam.ac.uk web: www.socanth.cam.ac.uk
Departmental Report
Staff developments and the anthropological community
There have been several staff changes during 2008/2009 which will enable the Department to conduct its core activities of research and teaching with greater efficiency. The teaching complement of the staff comprises of 15 people (13 UTOs plus Dr Barbara Bodenhorn (Isaac Newton Lecturer) and Dr Hildegard Diemberger (Senior Research Associate). Dr Nick Long was appointed as temporary Lecturer. Professor Marilyn Strathern has retired and Professor Henrietta Moore has been appointed as William Wyse Professor. Several members of the Department have achieved national and international marks of esteem. Professor Caroline Humphrey has been elected Fellow of the Academia Europae, London. Dr Yael Navaro-Yashin has been appointed as a visiting scholar at L’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS, Paris), and has been invited to give four lectures in December 2009.Research
The Department is in the process of making two new appointments: a Mellon Teaching Fellow in Gender, Kinship and Caring, and a Research Associate in Resources – natural, conceptual, human.
In the past year, staff at the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit have been engaged in research on four existing large AHRC funded projects and an Isaac Newton Trust post-doctoral award. In addition, Dr Christopher Kaplonski has been awarded funds by the British Academy for archival research on the topic 'The death of the Buddhist state: violence and sovereignty in early socialist Mongolia' and Dr Uradyn Bulag was awarded a British Academy Visiting Fellowship grant to host Dr Aga Zuoshi on a 3-month visit to Cambridge to carry out research on the project 'The project of civilization in Liangshan, Southwest China (1923 - 1949)'. Following Dr Zuoshi's visit, Dr Bulag has been successful in obtaining funds from the Nuffield Foundation to carry out a period of joint fieldwork with Dr Zuoshi in Sichuan province on a new theme entitled 'Centripetalism: political pilgrimage and the building of national and ethnic centres in China'.
Teaching
The Department has 62 students registered for the PhD and 15 students on MPhil courses. Further information on all of these areas of Department activity may be found on our website: http://www.socanth.cam.ac.ukFull-time staff
Susan Bayly (PhD, 1980, Cambridge; Reader in Historical Anthropology; Fellow, Christ’s College): History and anthropology - interdisciplinarity, French and British colonialism, postcolonial religious and cultural transformations, colonial anthropology, caste; colonial and contemporary South Asia (India); colonial and contemporary Vietnam.
Barbara Bodenhorn (PhD, 1990, Cambridge; Newton Trust Lecturer, Pembroke College): '4th World' politics, knowledge practices (environmental and other); risk, decision-making, anthropology and economic relations; kinship; gender; the Arctic (N. Alaska); local sustainable development in rural Mexico (Oaxaca, Michoacan).
Uradyn E Bulag (PhD, 1993, Cambridge; Reader; Selwyn College): Comparative colonialism and imperialism (pan-Asianism; diplomacy; alter/native urbanisation); ethnicity and nationalism (hybridity; national unity; collaborative nationalism); (un)sharing cultures and histories (Mongolia-Tibet interface; politics of friendship; national heritage regimes; translingual practices); socialist/post-socialist political forms and imagination (minority revolution; autonomous institutions and laws; frontier films); East Asia (China, Japan, Taiwan) and Inner Asia (Mongolia, Tibet).
Hildegard Diemberger (PhD, 1992, University of Vienna; Senior Associate in Research, Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit): Tibetan culture; local state dynamics and the impact of radical change on traditional communities; Landscape, space and time; local history and memory; changing notions of power and kinship; debates over continuity, tradition and modernity; Tibet.
Harri Englund (PhD, 1995, Manchester; Reader; Fellow, Churchill College): Human rights and the moral imagination; liberalism and inequality; African vernacular media and literature; law; poverty and 'development'; Christianity; the theory and method of ethnography; South-Central Africa (Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia).
Leo Howe (PhD, 1981, Edinburgh; Senior Lecturer; Dean, Darwin College): Ritual, religion, symbolism; hierarchy; cultural politics of new religious movements; violence and the state; Balinese transmigrants in Sulawesi; work and unemployment, bureaucracy, ethnicity, ideological forms; urban studies; South-east Asia and Indonesia (Bali), Europe (N.Ireland).
Caroline Humphrey FBA (PhD, 1975, Cambridge; Rausing Professor of Collaborative Anthropology; Fellow, King’s College): Shamanism; theories of ritual; socialist/ post-socialist economy and society; political forms; and the political imagination in east Asia; anthropology of the city; Asia (former USSR, Mongolia, China).
James Laidlaw (PhD, 1990, Cambridge; Lecturer; Fellow, King’s College): The interface between anthropological and ethical theory; religion and ritual, with special interest in Jainism, Hinduism, and Buddhism; theoretical approaches to religion including cognitive psychology; contemporary transformations in religions in Asia, including new forms of Buddhist self-formation; India (especially Rajasthan), East Asia (especially Inner Mongolia and Taiwan).
Sian Lazar (PhD, 2002, Goldsmith’s College, London; Lecturer; Fellow, Clare College): Ethnography of the state, democracy and citizenship; social movements, especially trade unions; gender; the city; and the anthropology of politics and development; Latin America (specifically Bolivia and Argentina).
Nicholas Long (PhD, 2009, Cambridge; Temporary Lecturer; Fellow, Wolfson College): Secessionism, decentralisation and democratisation; cynicism and disillusionment; the anthropology of achievement; the uncanny; human resources; Malay identity; urban anthropology; Indonesia (specifically Riau); Singapore; the 'Malay World'.
Perveez Mody (PhD, 2001, Cambridge; Temporary Lecturer; Mellon Research Fellow from 01/01/10): Love-marriage, the history of civil marriage law from the colonial into the post-colonial period; politics of religious nationalism; changes in South Asian kinship, marriage and urban sexuality (sexual relations, conjugality, gender and the family); law and human rights; kinship in East London; India, South Asia, UK.
Henrietta L. Moore (PhD, 1986, Cambridge, William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology, Professorial Fellow, Jesus College): Sexuality, gender, social transformation, ethics, new forms of self-fashioning, cosmopolitanism, culture and globalisation. Africa (Kenya, Uganda, Zambia)
Yael Navaro-Yashin (PhD, 1998, Princeton; Senior Lecturer; Fellow, Newnham College): Anthropology of politics; ethnography of the state; administrations, organizations, bureaucracies; anthropology of law; theories of affect, psychoanalysis, and the anthropology of the emotions; space and place and the anthropology of cities; social theory and political philosophy; anthropology of Europe and the Middle East, Turkey, Cyprus.
David Sneath (PhD, 1991, Cambridge; Reader; Head of Department of Social Anthropology from 01/10/09; Fellow, Corpus Christi College): The state, political culture and economic institutions in Inner Asia; the anthropology of Development; pastoralism, land use and the environment; decollectivisation and post-Soviet social transformations; Inner Mongolia (China) and Mongolia, Inner and Central Asia.
Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov (PhD, 1998, Stanford; Lecturer; Fellow, Sidney Sussex College): Northern Siberia, relation between indigenous peoples and the state; comparative colonialism; socialist and post-socialist economic systems, systems of taxation; anthropological theory; the anthropology of the former Soviet Union.
Affiliated lecturers
Françoise Barbira-Freedman (Clare Hall): Medical Anthropology; shamanism; anthropology of childbirth and reproductive health; ethnobotany; ethnography of Western Amazonia (Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia).
Monica M.E. Bonaccorso: Anthropology of science and medicine - assisted conception, genetics/genomics, neuroscience, HIV/AIDS and Malaria; anthropology of media and museums; development and bioethics, the production of knowledge; kinship, gender, sexuality and the body; Europe (Italy/UK) and East Africa (Kenya/South Africa).
Simon Cohn (Girton College, Magdalene College): Medical anthropology; anthropology of science & STS; bioethics; cultural constructions of the self; applied and collaborative work; Britain, Europe.
Paola Filippucci (New Hall/Murray Edwards College): Space, place and landscape; memory, historicity, the cultural construction of the past; kinship and life narratives; gender, kinship and work; Europe.
Monica Konrad (Girton College): Anthropology of science and medicine, reproductive and genetic technologies, ethics of research relating to healthcare in developing countries, cross-cultural bioethics and the institutional contexts of science; Britain, Europe, South East Asia.
Maryon McDonald (Fellow, Robinson College): Language and linguistics; medical anthropology; anthropology of science, biotechnology and ethics; political anthropology; anthropology and psychology; management; EU institutions and policies; Europe.
Martin T Walsh (Wolfson College): Anthropology of development and social change; development consultancy; Islam and politics; moral panics; science and rumour; ethnobiology and linguistics; Zanzibar, Tanzania, Kenya, Sudan, Liberia, Nigeria.
Anthropological staff at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
Mark Elliott (Assistant Curator for Anthropology): Collections research on photographs and artefacts from South Asia and the Pacific; museums and their publics; Hindu image worship; relationships between people and artefacts; histories of travel and collection in South Asia; South Asia (West Bengal).
Anita Herle (MPhil, 1987, Cambridge; Senior Curator for Anthropology): Museum studies; art and representation; visual anthropology; history of anthropology; Torres Strait, Northwest Coast of Canada.
Departmental Associates and Anthropologists in other Faculties and Institutes
Mikiko Ashikari (Research Associate): Representation of body, memory and subjectivities; gender and ethnicity; fashion and tradition; life histories. (Japan)
Birgit Buergi (Research Assistant, PLACEBO): Advanced S&T capacity in developing world settings; North-South and South-South R&D collaborations; organisational ethnography; environmental knowledge, science and development.
Liana Chua (Research Fellow, Gonville and Caius College): Ethnic citizenship, religious change; development; artefact-oriented theory; indigenous museums; ethnographic photography; Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo.
Paul Connerton (Affiliated): Body, space and memory; anthropological theory.
Joanna Cook (Research Fellow, Christ's College): Thai Buddhism; ascetic practice; anthropology of ethics and personhood; cultures of mindfulness: meditation techniques in psychology and monasticism.
Gregory Delaplace (Research Associate): Relationships with dead people and "invisible things" in Mongolia; graves; ghosts; photography.
Susan Drucker-Brown (Affiliated): Kingship, ritual, ethnic conflict; history of anthropology; biography of Professor Meyer Fortes. Ghana, Mexico. Editor: Cambridge Anthropology.
Suzanne Hoelgaard (Affiliated): Social policy, development and child welfare, socialization, substitute care and identity; Britain, Colombia.
A Hürelbaatar (Affiliated, Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit): The language of politics; Mongolia.
Manpreet Janeja (Research Fellow, Girton College): Anthropology of food and hospitality; collaborative anthropology; material culture; anthropology of place; legal anthropology; trust; 'multiculturalism'; popular Hinduism and Islam [India (Bengal), Bangladesh, UK].
Timothy Jenkins (Fellow, Jesus College, ADR in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies): Theory; religion, magic and ritual; land inheritance and nationalism; Western Europe (France and Britain).
Chris Kaplonski (Senior Research Associate, Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit): Memory; narrative; political violence; representation of violence; post-socialism; political anthropology. (Mongolia) Project Manager for "The Oral History of Twentieth Century Mongolia".
Jonathan Mair (Research Fellow, St John’s): Contemporary Buddhism in Inner Mongolia; Mongolian Incarnations and their disciples; the ethics of self-cultivation; faith and the anthropology of ignorance.
Daniele Moretti (British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow): Artisanal and small-scale gold mining; dreams; gender relations; environmental anthropology; Papua New Guinea.
Maja Petrovic-Steger (Research Fellow, Peterhouse): Exploring the contexts where bodies - live; medically usable; and human remains - become the sites of economic, legal, political, scientific and artistic attention; post-conflict societies; Serbia, Tasmania, England.
Karma Phuntsho (Research Associate, Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit): Tibetan Buddhism and Bhutan; Indo-Tibetan Buddhist philosophy and practice; socio-cultural issues relevant to contemporary Bhutan. Currently studying the Younghusband collection of Tibetan books in the Cambridge University library.
Ruth Prince (Smuts Postdoctoral Fellow, African Studies Centre): AIDS and anti-retroviral therapy, biomedicine, religion, identity, kinship and gender relations; Kenya and East Africa.
Amy E. Rowe (ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow, Deptartment of Middle Eastern Studies): race and ethnicity, religious identity, place/landscape, assimilation/multiculturalism, diaspora and migration (Middle East and U.S.A.).
Susanna Rostas (Affiliated): Performance, dance; ethnicity, invented ethnicity and identity; popular culture; indigenous religion, religious conversion; art as process; Mexico (Chiapas and Mexico City).
Sara Shneiderman (Research Fellow, St Catharine's): Ethnic, religious, gender and political identities; ritual practice; cultural production; cross-border migration; subjectivity and the state; indigenous rights and the politics of recognition; violence and conflict (South and East Asia; the Himalayas; Nepal, India, Tibet and China).
Vera Skvirskaja (Research Associate): Working on projects ‘Exploring Post-Cosmopolitanism’ and ‘Black Sea Currents’ (AHRC grant, ‘Diaspora, Migration and Identities programme’).
Mark Turin (Research Associate; Director, Digital Himalaya Project & World Oral Literature Project): Linguistic anthropology; anthropological linguistics; visual anthropology; ethnicity; digital technology in anthropology; archival practices; cultural property; Nepal; Tibet; Sikkim; Himalayas.
Piers Vitebsky (Assistant Director of Research, Scott Polar Research Institute): Anthropology of religion and psychological anthropology; shamanism; marginal ecologies (reindeer herding, shifting cultivation) and the state; Asia (Arctic Siberia, Tribal India).
Clarissa de Waal (Fellow, Newnham College): Post-socialist social and economic change (Albania): survival strategies, property relations, rural education.
Helen Watson (Fellow, St John’s College): Nationalism and conflict, gender; North Africa, Islam, Ireland.
Emeritus members of the department
Ray Abrahams (Fellow, Churchill College): Kinship, politics, law, neighbourhood, age organisation; East Africa (Tanzania and Uganda), North and East Europe (Finland, Estonia).
Esther Goody (Reader Emeritus in Social Anthropology; Fellow, New Hall): Comparative studies, domestic organisation, socialization, learning and authority, immigrants in the UK; West Africa (N. Ghana).
Jack Goody (Emeritus Professor; Fellow, St John's College): West Africa; comparative and historical anthropology; Eurasia and Africa; communication; family; myth.
Stephen Hugh-Jones (Honorary Emeritus Associate): Oral narratives, ritual, shamanism and religion; human - animal relations and ecological anthropology; kinship and the anthropology of architecture; cultural politics and indigenous movements; linguistic anthropology and Amerindian languages; Latin/South America; fieldwork in Colombian Amazonia.
Alan Macfarlane FBA (PhD, 1972, London; Professor of Anthropological Science; Fellow, King’s College): Historical anthropology; demographic anthropology; applications of information technology: the origins and implications of individualism and capitalism; England C15 C18, contemporary Nepal, Japan, China; the Gurungs of central Nepal; and the Nagas of the Burma-India border.
Malcolm Ruel (Emeritus Fellow, Clare College): Comparative religion and ritual, politics; East and West Africa.
Dame Marilyn Strathern FBA (PhD, 1968, Cambridge; William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology; Mistress, Girton College): Gender theory; English kinship; reproductive technology; bioethics; intellectual and cultural property; issues in interdisciplinarity, the Pacific (Papua New Guinea), Europe (Britain).