Annals: Departmental reports and staff listings

School of Oriental and African Studies

Department of Anthropology and Sociology
T: 0207 898 4020  F: 020 7898 4699  E: Artsandhumanities(AT)soas.ac.uk  W: www.soas.ac.uk

Departmental report 2009-10

Students Applications to our single and joint honours BA degrees have continued to be high, however recruitment is constrained by our capped undergraduate recruitment quota. Squaring this circle has required us to raise our entry grades once more. The seven MA programmes saw record recruitment in 2009-10 which may reflect, among other things, a tightened job market. Like other departments, we await the result of our application under the new ESRC recognition exercise, in our case as a member in the Bloomsbury DTC consortium. Our MPhil/PhD programme continues to recruit well among overseas students.

For information on Open Days and other opportunities for potential undergraduate and postgraduate students to visit the campus, see www.soas.ac.uk/admissions/ug/opendays/ and /www.soas.ac.uk/admissions/pg/openevenings/.

Research Awards Of the larger awards: David Mosse gained a two year ESRC-funded research award to continue his work on several projects including Christianity in India, the political rights of India’s Dalit (untouchables), and relations between these. Steve Hughes spent the year in India working on early film distribution as a Senior Research Fellow of the American Institute of Indian Studies. Gabi vom Bruck took two terms sabbatical leave to continue writing her Yemeni biography project; while Kevin Latham spent a term writing up materials on new media in China. Kostas Retsikas gained a three year ESRC award to study charities in Indonesia, and he will be on research leave from January 2011.

Facilities The anticipated upgrade of our Helen Kanitkar Library and Research Centre was completed last summer and the availability of a suite of computers and upgraded wi-fi has been appreciated particularly by our students.

Exhibitions, Conferences, Seminars Trevor Marchand’s photographic exhibition, Djenné: African City of Mud, had a successful run at the Royal Institute of British Architects from 3 March-29 May 2010. The exhibition was augmented by a lecture and discussion series to explore the relationship between design and construction practices, particularly architectural heritage and cultural identity in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Djenné, an island town in West Africa’s Inland Niger Delta. With Ben Hopkins, Magnus Marsden convened a timely conference on Rethinking the Swat Pathan;amongst numerous distinguished speakers, an introduction by Frederik Barth was a special highlight.

It was SOAS’s turn to convene the 2010 Anthropology in London conference, an event designed particularly for postgraduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and early career staff to present their work. This year’s theme was Contemporary Trends in Fieldwork and Ethnography. As has become customary, UCL acted as generous hosts. Trevor Marchand and Anna Portisch coordinated administration.

The two research centres based in the department enjoyed very active years, each of them running seminars throughout the year. For further information on their activities visit:  http://www.soas.ac.uk/foodstudies/ and http://www.soas.ac.uk/migrationdiaspora/

Additionally, we ran a departmental seminar and specialist seminars in anthropology of development, and anthropology of media, as well as an ethnographic film series.

Publications Among our book-length publications, Trevor Marchand’s The Masons of Djenné (Indiana University Press) and Lola Martinez’s Remaking Kurosawa: translations and permutations in global cinema (Palgrave Macmillan) both appeared in 2009.

Our Visiting Professor in the Anthropology of Tourism, Tom Selwyn, co-edited with Julie Scott the latest volume of the ASA Monographs under the title Thinking Through Tourism ( Berg,, 2010). Magnus Marsden and Kostas Retsikas hosted a successful conference on Thirty years of the Anthropology of Islam: Retrospect and Prospect in July 2009 from which a publication is anticipated.

A themed journal issue Documenting the Beijing Olympics edited by Kevin Latham and Lola Martinez will be published in Sport in Society: Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics (Volume 13 Issue 5) in 2010 and will be reissued as a book in 2011. Trevor Marchand was editor of the 2010 Special Issue of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute under the title Making Knowledge, which will also appear as a book.

Staff  Trevor Marchand has been promoted to Professor of Social Anthropology from the coming academic year. Otherwise our permanent staffing is unchanged. We are indebted to a large body of part-time staff (Visiting Professors and Readers, Senior Teaching Fellows, Teaching Fellows and Graduate Teaching Assistants) who bring our complement to well over forty teaching staff. John Campbell will succeed Richard Fardon as Head of Department from mid-August. Richard and Magnus Marsden will be on sabbatical leave for all or most of the year, and a number of other staff have single term sabbatical leave entitlements (as indicated below).

Teaching staff 2010-11

For later updates, see http://www.soas.ac.uk/anthropology/staff/

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

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. On sabbatical leave 2010-11

Stephen Hughes (PhD, Chicago; Lecturer) Popular cinema, media theory, historical anthropology and visual anthropology; India, especially the Tamil-speaking south, and Sri Lanka.

Jakob Klein (PhD, SOAS; Lecturer) Food and eating, culinary traditions, consumption; China (South).

Kevin Latham (PhD, SOAS; Senior Lecturer) Chinese media, theatre and popular culture; consumption, new media and journalism; PRC and Hong Kong.

Trevor Marchand (B. Architecture, McGill, PhD, SOAS; Professor) West Africa, South Arabia and the United Kingdom: building-craft knowledge and apprenticeship; embodied cognition and communication; architectural conservation and the built environment.

Magnus Marsden (PhD, Cambridge; Senior 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. Sabbatical leave in terms one and two.

Dolores P Martinez (DPhil, Oxford; Reader) Popular culture in the media, anthropology of tourism, ritual, gender relations; Japan.

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. ESRC-funded research leave 2010-11.

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

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

Parvathi Raman (PhD, SOAS; Senior Lecturer) Indian and South African identity; African and Asian communities in London. Sabbatical leave in term three.

Kostas Retsikas (PhD, Edinburgh; Lecturer) South-east Asian anthropology, notably Indonesia, Java, migration, ethnicity and the body. ESRC-funded research leave from January 2011.

Edward Simpson (PhD, LSE; Senior 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; Senior Lecturer) Middle East with emphasis on the Arabian Peninsular (especially Yemen): elites, memory, gender, religion and politics.

Harry G West (PhD, Wisconsin; Professor) 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. Sabbatical leave in term three.

Visiting Professors: Peter Loizos (PhD, LSE); J.D.Y. Peel (PhD DLit, London, FBA); Tom Selwyn (PhD, SOAS)

Visiting Readers: Audrey Cantlie (PhD, London), Emma Crewe (PhD, Edinburgh)

Senior Teaching Fellows:Dr Richard Axelby; DrAnne Mette Fisker-Nielsen;Dr Gustaaf Houtman; Dr Monica Janowski; Ms Mahnaz Marashi;Dr Louella Matsunaga; Ms Ana Margarida Santos; Dr Damian Walter.

Teaching Fellow: Dr Julia Winckler

Graduate Teaching Assistants: Paul Rollier, Sandra Manuel, Toni Baum, Willa Zhen, Reza Gholami, Andre Chappatte, Debojyoti Das, Alice Tilche, Antonie Kraemer, Minori Suzuki

Anthropologists in other SOAS departments

Mark Hobart (PhD, SOAS; Professor, Centre for Media and Film 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. Leave of absence 2010-11.

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

Emeritus Professors

Lionel Caplan (PhD, SOAS)

Adrian Mayer (PhD, LSE)

J D Y Peel (PhD DLit, London, FBA; also Visiting Professor)

Paul Spencer (DPhil, Oxford)

Richard Tapper (PhD, SOAS)

Professorial Research Associates

Raymond Apthorpe (DPhil, Oxford)

Jeremy Keenan (PhD, Exeter)

Tom Selwyn (PhD, SOAS; also Visiting Professor)

Research Associates of the Department

Nematollah Fazeli (PhD, SOAS)

Hermione Harris (PhD, SOAS)

David Marsden (PhD, Durham)

Anna Portisch (PhD, SOAS)

Jakob Rigi (PhD, SOAS)

Stuart Thompson (BA Durham)

Shelagh Weir (PhD, London)

Research Associate of the Food Studies Centre

Monica Janowski (PhD, LSE; also Senior Teaching Fellow)

Postdoctoral research associates

Emma-Jayne Abbots (PhD, Goldsmiths)

Julie Botticello (PhD, UCL)

Nuno Domingos (PhD, SOAS)

Nicola Frost (PhD, Goldsmiths)

Defne Karaosmanoglu (PhD, McGill)

Research Associate of the Centre for Migration and Diaspora Studies

Hudita Nura Mustafa (PhD, Harvard)

Postdoctoral research associates

Julie Botticello (PhD, UCL)

Nicola Frost (PhD, Goldsmiths)

Defne Karaosmanoglu (PhD, McGill)

Marina Marouda (PhD, Edinburgh)

Administration

Nita Parmar (BA, North London) Faculty Officer, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, SOAS (np9@soas.ac.uk)

Special resources and facilities

Teaching in African and Asian languages; SOAS National Library for African and Asian Studies; regional Centres, disciplinary Centres (including Food, and Migration and Diaspora within the Department); specialized MA programmes.