Annals: Departmental reports and staff listings

Queen’s University Belfast

Anthropological Studies, School of History and Anthropology, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast BT7 1NN
T: 028 9097 3701; F: 028 9097 3700; E: anthropology(AT)qub.ac.uk
W: http:// www.qub.ac.uk/schools/AnthropologicalStudies

Departmental report

Anthropology is located in the School of History and Anthropology at Queen’s University. In 2008, our teaching developments included revision of the undergraduate curriculum at first year with an increase in module offerings from two to four per year in line with University policy to address retention rates and student progression. These additions have led to cross-disciplinary teaching collaborations with History in first year courses. We have plans to extend our undergraduate offerings on Ireland as a precursor to the MA in the Anthropology of Ireland. At postgraduate level the collaboration with Minzu University (formerly Central University of Nationalities, Beijing) is proving popular with an increased number of postgraduate applications for next year.Other potential future developments include the creation of a new MA in Irish Music and an MA in Tourism.

There were no changes to permanent staff. Dr Fiona Magowan was appointed Director of Research in Anthropology and Ethnomusicology following the end of Professor Milton’s term of office. Lisette Josephides was promoted to Professor. Dr Jonathan Skinner took up the position of Head of Undergraduate Recruitment for the School. Dr Rosellen Roche completed her project on young people and took up a Research Fellowship in the Institute of Irish Studies. We welcomed the new Charles Wallace Fellow to Anthropology, Dr. Chandan Kumar Sharma from Tezpur University, Assam, for three months.

Key events and activities during 2008 included the following: Professor Hastings Donnan led the RAE 2008 through as Chair with most of the year spent assessing and in meetings. In January he delivered two lectures at the Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum (India). As academic adviser to the Trustees of the Royal Ulster Constabulary’s George Cross Foundation, he oversaw the completion of 130 interviews in the lottery-funded RUC oral history project and a web-based archive was piloted from which these materials will be available for access. Professor Donnan commenced research as a partner investigator in an EU-funded Social Signal Processing Network grant with colleagues from Psychology at Queen’s and in October was adviser to the European Commission’s forthcoming Socio-Economic Sciences and Humanities (SESH) Research Programme in Florence. Dr. Fiona Magowan was an invited speaker at the International Symposium on Intangible Cultural Heritage, Melbourne, Australia and attended the National Ministers Conference in Charles Darwin University in July. She also conducted fieldwork in Darwin on oral histories of Uniting Church ministers and former missionaries. In September Dr. Magowan  was the anthropological representative for Ireland and invited speaker at the International Congress for Anthropology in Spain and Europe in Madrid. Dr. Jonathan Skinner successfully completed a research project into social inclusion and social dancing amongst senior citizens funded by the Atlantic Philanthropies. ‘Social Dance for Successful Ageing’ was the key finding picked up worldwide from The Sunday Times to the India Times.  His new dance partner and key respondent is in her 70s and dances in ballrooms and on ice! Professor Lisette Josephides gave an invited talk at the University of Bergen. She attended the ASA conference in Auckland in December and convened the ASA-sponsored panel in honour of Marilyn Strathern. She gave a paper in this panel and was an invited speaker on The Ethics of Apology panel. Professor Josephides prepared a series of seminars for the Oslo Summer School in Comparative Social Science Studies which will be delivered at the University of Oslo next year. She was appointed to an AHRC Peer Review College panel. Dr. Maruška Svašek received a seed grant from Changing Ageing Partnership (CAP) for an eight month project entitled Transnational Families, Age Progression and Care for a study of the practical and emotional challenges of long-distance relationships and care. She also joined part of an international interdisciplinary research team funded by EU Framework 7 on the evolution of European Identity. Her two year project focuses on life courses and narratives of transnational workers. The Cultural Dynamics and Emotions Network established by Dr, Svašek in 2007 is flourishing with engagements of two artists in virtual residence Kate Hollet and George Hughes and two teaching/research groups involving partners from Belfast, Chennai, Pondicherry and Dublin connecting students through co-taught projects on love and grief and the emotional efficacy of stereotypes. In November she presented a paper in Chennai at a conference on Corporate Responsibility. 

Our weekly research seminars continued to provide lively and stimulating debate from national and international speakers with two series: the first on Stories of Migration was organised by Dr. Jonathan Skinner and Dr. Maruška Svašek and the second on Religious Performativity was organised by Dr. Fiona Magowan and Dr. Suzel Reily.

Full-time staff

Hastings Donnan (DPhil 1981, Sussex; Professor, MRIA, AcSS) Anthropology of frontiers, violence and conflict, Islam and Muslim identity; Pakistan, Ireland

Lisette Josephides (PhD 1984, London; Professor) Philosophy of anthropology, phenomenology and existentialism, issues of knowledge and evidence, human rights and moral philosophy, ethics and the field, self theory and narrative, emotions, politics, gender, social change; Papua New Guinea, the Pacific

John Knight (PhD 1992, London; Reader) Migration, forestry, farming, hunting, relations with wildlife and other environmental issues; Japan

Fiona Magowan (PhD 1995, Oxford; Senior Lecturer) Song, dance and ritual; contemporary Christianity; sense and emotion; Northern Territory, Australia; Belfast

Graham McFarlane (PhD 1978, Belfast; Senior Teaching Fellow) Economic anthropology, development, sectarianism, social structure, food and national cuisines; British Isles and Ireland, Greece

Kay Milton (PhD 1981, Belfast; Professor) Ecological and environmental anthropology, emotion, perception and cognition;

Kenya, Great Britain, Ireland

Suzel Ana Reily (PhD 1990, Sao Paulo; Reader) Ethnomusicology, musical experience, subalternity, Catholicism, hypermedia; Brazil and Latin America

Marina Roseman (PhD 1986, Cornell; Lecturer) Healing, music, dance, ritual, in relation to historical and contemporary change; Temiar, Malaysian rainforest

Jonathan Skinner (PhD 1997, St Andrews; Lecturer) Tourism, dance communities (salsa jive), poetry and performance, modern dance and dance therapy, same sex issues; Caribbean, UK, US

Paulo Sousa (PhD 2005, Michigan; Lecturer) Folk conceptions of mind, agency and morality, religious representations and kinship relatedness; US, Brazil.

Maruška Svašek (PhD 1996, Amsterdam; Senior Lecturer) Art, identity, politics, social memory, emotions, borders, migration; the Czech Republic, Germany, Ghana, Northern Ireland

Other staff

Anthony D Buckley (PhD 1982 Birmingham; Honorary Senior Research Fellow) Medicine, ethnicity, religion, brotherhoods; Nigeria, N. Ireland

Maurna Crozier (PhD 1985 Belfast; Honorary Research Fellow) Cultural studies, gender, divided societies; Ireland (Community Relations Council)

Neil Jarman (PhD 1995, London Honorary Senior Research Fellow) Visual anthropology, material culture, policy, policing, human rights; Northern Ireland

Shaun Ogle (PhD 1985 Belfast; Honorary Research Fellow) Recreation, use of the countryside, young people's involvement in sport; Northern Ireland

Joyce Pettigrew (PhD 1969 Manchester; Honorary Research Fellow) Political anthropology, primary health care and development; North-west India, Pakistan

Marc Schiltz (PhD 1980 London, Honorary Senior Research Fellow) Life stories, emotion and subjectivity, oral history, politics, conflict, religion, witchcraft-sorcery; West Africa (especially Nigeria), Papua New Guinea

Elizabeth Tonkin (DPhil 1971 Oxford; Professor Emerita) History, oral history and anthropology, power and symbolism; West Africa

Anthropologists elsewhere in the university

Dominic Bryan (DPhil 1997, Ulster; Senior Lecturer, Director of the Institute of Irish Studies) Political anthropology, ritual, ethnicity, anthropology and policy; Northern Ireland

Jude Stephens (PhD 1995, Belfast; Lecturer in the Gibson Institute for Land, Food and Environment) Green politics, rural economy, sustainable technologies; Northern Ireland

Rosellen Roche (PhD 2004, Cambridge; Research Fellow) Young people, violence, sexual behaviour, paramilitary punishment, reconciliation, material culture; Ireland and England