Annals: Departmental reports and staff listings
University of Oxford
Departmental report
The School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography (SAME, Director: David Gellner), comprises the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology (ISCA, Director: Marcus Banks), the Institute of Human Sciences (IHS, Director: Andrew Gosler), the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology (ICEA, Director: Robin Dunbar), the Centre for Migration Policy and Society (COMPAS, Director: Michael Keith) funded by the ESRC, and the teaching and research functions of the Pitt Rivers Museum. Research clusters include the Centre for Anthropology and Mind, medical and ecological anthropology (including the Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group), the longstanding British Centre for Durkheimian Studies that continues to organize a range of workshops, book launches, and other events, and the Pitt Rivers Museum Research Centre which enhances the co-ordination of material and visual anthropology, and museum ethnography. The School embraces a holistic approach to the discipline encompassing social, material, visual, medical, biological, cognitive, and evolutionary anthropology.
Staff
David Gellner took over as Head of Department from Harvey Whitehouse in October 2009. Nicholas Baumard, Florian Kiessling, Ryan McKay, Adrian Murzac, and Yvan Russell joined the Centre for Anthropology and Mind as Postdoctoral Researchers on the EXREL project with Harvey Whitehouse. Bal Gopal Shrestha joined the School as Postdoctoral Researcher on the Vernacular Religion project and Katharine Swancutt continued her association in a similar position on the Icons and Innovation project (both funded under the AHRC ‘Religion and Society’ programme). Rachel Pechey began her post as BUPA Research Officer working on obesity and anthropology. Jon Lanman became a DL as a temporary teaching replacement for Harvey Whitehouse. Marc Brightman joined as an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow working with Laura Rival. Tamara Sirey became a part-time DL in genetics for Human Sciences. Iain Morley will join the School in October 2010 in the new DL position of Palaeoanthropology.
Iain Walker finished working for ISCA and began an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship associated with COMPAS. Staff have also been employed to launch the Migration Observatory at Oxford project which began in early 2010. These include Carlos Vargas Silva, Nando Sigona, Finbar Mulholland, Scott Blinder and Ben Gidley.
Postdoctoral researchers Quentin Atkinson, Emma Cohen, Max Burton left the School, as did COMPAS Senior Researcher Ellie Vasta. Gordon Ingram also worked at the School for the academic year of 2009-10 as a DL and temporary teaching replacement for Justin Barrett.
Research
New grants include two of the AHRC Religion and Society programme’s Large Research Grants: Vernacular Religiosity in the Nepali Diaspora (led by David Gellner and Sondra Hausner) and Icons and Innovation in Southwest China’s Religious Texts (led by Elisabeth Hsu). The Unit for Biocultural Variation and Obesity obtained a BUPA Foundation Grant. Robin Dunbar received a grant from EPSRC under their Knowledge Transfer Scheme. Robin Dunbar and Mark van Vugt received an ESRC seminar grant for ‘Darwin’s Medicine: Evolutionary Psychology and its Applications’. Laura Peers received an AHRC grant to work with Alison K. Brown on 1840s Blackfoot Shirts. Marcus Banks was funded by the EPSRC ‘Innovative media for the digital economy’ programme for Ethics of Facebook Use.
Justin Barrett received the John Templeton Foundation Research Grant, Chinese Cognitive Science of Religion, with K.J. Clark. Paul Dresch received seedcorn funding from St John’s College for the interdisciplinary study of law and legal systems - the project will also involve Malcolm Vale, Fernanda Pirie, Judith Scheele, and Sarah Womack. Robert Barnes has been conducting archival research in the National Archef, The Hague, into eastern Indonesian history. Evolution of Religion: Combining Bottom Up and Top Down Approaches, co-investigated by Harvey Whitehouse and David Sloan Wilson was funded by the Templeton Foundation. The McDonnell Foundation and the John Fell Fund funded The Development of Teleological and Causal Reasoning about Ritual, co-investigated by Harvey Whitehouse and Christine Legare.
Oliver Curry was awarded a grant towards research into The Psychology of Political Coalitions and Inge Daniels received a Japan Foundation Fellowship to conduct fieldwork in Japan in 2009. Iain Walker received an ESRC fellowship to examine The Significance of Belonging in the Comoros, Zanzibar, the UK and France.
Justin Barrett received the William Bier Award in 2010 from the American Psychological Association.
In 2010, the Migration Observatory at Oxford initiative, based at COMAPS, began. This initiative aims to provide access to the latest data and authoritative analysis on migration and migration policy issues in the UK, set in an international context. The Observatory’s goal is to become the premier source of independent, authoritative analysis of data on migration and migrants in the UK, to inform media, public and policy debates as well as academic analysis.
The Marett Lecturer this year was Professor Bryon Good. Dr Charles Stewart gave the 2010 Evans-Pritchard Lectures. JASO (the Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford) is available, together with all back issues, at http://www.anthro.ox.ac.uk/publications/jaso/. In early 2010, the School launched a programme of podcasts, which are available to download and listen to on iTunes U and also at http://www.anthro.ox.ac.uk/publications/podcasts/. The podcasts include lectures, seminars, interviews with the Marett and Evans-Pritchard lecturers and also with students, who talk about their experiences of studying anthropology at Oxford University.
More news about the department can be found in a new electronic newsletter available at: http://www.isca.ox.ac.uk/about-us/alumni/.
Teaching
Members of SAME contribute to undergraduate teaching in anthropology on two degrees, Human Sciences and Archaeology and Anthropology. For details see:
http://www.ihs.ox.ac.uk/current-students and http://www.arch.ox.ac.uk/undergraduate-studies.html
We offer taught Master’s in Social Anthropology (9-month MSt, 12-month MSc, 2-year MPhil), Material Culture and Museum Ethnography (MSc and MPhil), Visual Anthropology (MSc), Medical Anthropology (MSc and MPhil), Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology (MSc), and Migration Studies (MPhil). 74 students were accepted on to these degrees in 2009. In October 2010, the MPhil Migration Studies will be replaced by a Master’s degree in Migration Studies in association with the Oxford Department for International Development (ODID, formerly QEH).
Further details are available at:
www.isca.ox.ac.uk/prospective-students/degrees/
There are currently 112 students in total registered for doctorates in the department.
Full-time teaching staff
Marcus Banks (PhD 1985, Cambridge; Professor) Jainism, ethnicity and race, ethnographic film and visual representation; India, UK
Robert Barnes (DPhil 1973, Oxford; Professor) Thought, kinship, economic exchange, history; Indonesia
Justin Barrett (PhD, Cornell, Senior Researcher) Anthropology of the mind, cognition, religion
Mette Berg (DPhil 2004, Oxford; Lecturer) Migration, transnationalism, diasporas, the Caribbean, Cuba, cosmopolitanism, gender
Inge Daniels (PhD 2001, London; Lecturer) Visual and material culture, consumption, gift exchange, religion
Paul Dresch (DPhil 1982, Oxford; Lecturer) History, politics, tribalism, Islamic and customary law, semantic anthropology; Middle East (South Arabia)
Robin Dunbar (PhD 1974, Bristol; Professor) Evolutionary anthropology, evolutionary psychology, evolution of sociality, brain evolution in primates, human and primate behavioural ecology
Elizabeth Ewart (PhD 2000, Manchester; Lecturer) Anthropology of Lowland South America, Brazil, indigenous peoples, Amerindian cosmology, material anthropology, body arts, the social significance of everyday practices
David Gellner (DPhil 1987, Oxford; Professor) Buddhism, Hinduism, traditional urbanism, healers and their relation to religion, ritual and symbolism; Asia, East Asia
Clare Harris (PhD 1998, London; Reader/Curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum) Visual and material culture, art and aesthetics, museum and cultural representation, identity and diasporas; Himalayas, Tibet, South Asia
Elisabeth Hsu (PhD 1992, Cambridge; Reader) Chinese medicine in the PR of China and the diaspora especially East Africa, medical anthropology and linguistics; PRC, Tanzania
Hélène Neveu Kringelbach (DPhil 2005, Oxford; Lecturer) Anthropology of West Africa, especially Senegal and other Francophone states; Performance, especially dance and music; African mobility and African diasporas; Transnational marriages; African photography
Mike O’Hanlon (PhD 1985, London; Professor/Director of the Pitt Rivers Museum) Visual anthropology, objectification and modernity, museology; New Guinea, Melanesia, Australia
Robert Parkin (DPhil 1983, Oxford; Lecturer) Kinship, religion, identity, history of anthropology; South Asia, Poland and Eastern Europe
Laura Peers (PhD 1996, McMaster; Lecturer/Curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum) Native American cultural history and material culture, representation of Native American cultures, museums and indigenous peoples
Caroline Potter (DPhil, Oxford; Lecturer) Medical anthropology, population obesity, dance, embodiment, nutrition and human growth
David Pratten (PhD 2000, London; Lecturer/African Studies) Historical ethnography and colonialism, youth, violence and vigilantism; West Africa, Nigeria
Stanley Ulijaszek (PhD 1987, London; Professor), Nutritional anthropology, human ecology, reproduction; Papua New Guinea and the Pacific, Poland
Harvey Whitehouse (PhD 1991, Cambridge; Professor) Cultural transmission, cognitive science of culture, religion and ritual; Papua New Guinea and the Pacific.
Xiang Biao (DPhil 2003, Oxford; Lecturer) Migration, governance, labour, India-China comparison
Head of Department: David Gellner
Departmental Administrator: Ms Gil Middleton
Other Anthropologists in Oxford and Research Associates
Dr Nick Allen (Emeritus Fellow ISCA/Wolfson – retired)
Dr Shirley Ardener OBE (Research Associate - Queen Elizabeth House)
Dr Walter Armbrust (St Antony’s, Faculty of Oriental Studies)
Dr Renate Barber (Research Associate)
Dr Ruth Barnes (Ashmolean Museum)
Dr Juliet Bedford (Postdoctoral Associate – ISCA)
Professor Georgina Born (Research Associate, Department of Music)
Dr Jo Boyden (Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford Department of International Development)
Dr Udi Butler (Research Associate)
Dr Dawn Chatty (Queen Elizabeth House, Refugee Studies Centre)
Dr Támas Dávid-Barrett (Research Associate)
Dr Janette Davies (Research Associate – Queen Elizabeth House)
Dr Anne de Sales (Research Associate - Maison Française)
Dr Barbara Gerke (Postdoctoral Associate – ISCA)
Professor Roger Goodman (Nissan Institute)
Dr Matt Grove (Research Associate)
Dr Elizabeth Hallam (Research Associate)
Dr Sondra Hausner (Faculty of Theology)
Dr Cecilia Heyes (Research Associate – All Souls)
Dr Renee Hirschon (Research Associate – St Peter’s College)
Dr Gordon Ingram (Research Associate)
Professor Wendy James (Emeritus Fellow – ISCA/ St Cross College – retired)
Dr Vibha Joshi (Research Fellow)
Dr Anna Lora-Wainwright (School of Geography and the Environment)
Dr Dominique Lussier (Research Associate)
Dr Nicholas Márquez-Grant (Research Associate)
Dr David Mills (Centre for Continuing Education)
Professor Judith Okely (Research Associate – Queen Elizabeth House)
Dr Stephen Oppenheimer (Research Associate)
Dr Peter Parkes (Research Associate)
Professor David Parkin (Emeritus Fellow – ISCA/All Souls College – retired)
Dr W S F Pickering (British Centre for Durkheimian Studies - retired)
Dr Julia Powles (Research Associate)
Professor Vernon Reynolds (Emeritus Fellow - IBA/Magdalen – retired)
Dr Laura Rival (Queen Elizabeth House)
Professor Peter Rivière (Emeritus Fellow - ISCA/Linacre – retired)
Dr Judith Scheele (Research Associate – Postdoctoral Fellow, All Souls)
Dr Alison Shaw (Department of Public Health and Primary Care)
Dr Lidia Sciama (Research Associate – Queen Elizabeth House)
Dr Devi Sridhar (Research Associate – Postdoctoral Fellow, All Souls College)
Dr Clarinda Still (Research Associate – St Antony’s College)
Dr Anna Stirr (Research Associate)
Dr Martin Stokes (Faculty of Music)
Dr Mohammad Talib (Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies)
Professor Elizabeth Tonkin (Research Associate)
Dr Soraya Tremayne (Research Associate - Fertility and Reproductive Studies Group)
Dr Richard Vokes (Research Associate)
Dr Mark van Vugt (Research Associate)
Dr Jacqueline Waldren (Research Associate – Queen Elizabeth House)
Professor David Zeitlyn (Research Associate)
Special resources and facilities:
Pitt Rivers Museum, Bodleian Library, Tylor Library, Balfour Library, graduate computing facilities in the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, visual anthropology workroom
Departmental series
Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford (JASO)