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: Amanda Palmer), the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology (ICEA, Director: Harvey Whitehouse), the Centre for Migration Policy and Society (COMPAS, Director: Michael Keith) funded by the ESRC, the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society (InSIS, Director: Steve Rayner), 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 organise 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 and will hand over to Marcus Banks in October 2012, with Stanley Ulijaszek then becoming Director of the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology. Robin Dunbar left the School in May 2012 and Harvey Whitehouse took over as Director of the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology. Justine Barrett left the School in the July 2011.
The Institute for Science, Innovation and Society joined the School in January 2012. Headed by Steve Rayner and with a team including Javier Lezaun, InSIS researches and informs the key processes of social and technological innovation that are critical to business, governments and civil society in the 21st century and beyond.
David Zeitlyn joined the School in October 2010 as a Professor of Social Anthropology. In the same month Iain Morley joined the School in the new DL position of Palaeoanthropology. Morgan Clarke became UL in Social Anthropology in October 2011 and Julie Archambault also joined the School then as a DL in Social Anthropology and African Studies.
Ramon Sarró will join the School in October 2012 as a UL in the Social Anthropology of Africa. In the same month Emma Cohen will become a UL in Cognitive Anthropology.
New postdoctoral researchers include Pieter Francois, Jon Lanman, Camilla Mazzucato, Patricia Herrmann and Miriam Matthews, team members for the Ritual, Community and Conflict project which began in 2011, led by Harvey Whitehouse. Kaveri Qureshi is a new ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow working on Migration, Marital Instability and Divorce among British Asians: Transnationalism. Julie Archambault has also begun an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship working on Cruising through Uncertainty: mobile phones and mobility in Mozambique. Mingji Cuomu has joined the School as a Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Fellow working on a traditional Tibetan medical education called ‘textual initiation’. Rein Ove Sikveland has been a Postdoctoral Research Fellow since 2011, in a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) with Aurix Limited (Malvern, Worcestershire). His research area is interactional sociolinguistics and phonetics and the primary purpose of the project is to develop techniques for automated detection of conversational features.
In the Queen’s Birthday Honours List of June 2011, Professor Wendy James received a CBE for services to scholarship – a just recognition of her trio of ethnographic monographs on the Uduk people and her long-term commitment to the people of southern Sudan.
Research
The Ritual, Community and Conflict project, funded from an ESRC Large Grant, commenced in July 2011 and will run for five years under the direction of Harvey Whitehouse. The project has a global span, involving thirteen universities and international teams of anthropologists, psychologists, historians, archaeologists and evolutionary theorists. The aim is to examine both the acquisition of ritual and ritual’s role in group cohesion, inter-group relations and the evolution of political systems.
Kaveri Qureshi was awarded an ESRC grant towards research into Migration, Marital Instability and Divorce amongst British Asians: Transnationalism, Changing Conjugalities and Legal Pluralism. The project seeks ti understand the context and consequences of the increasing instability and breakdown that has been observed in British Pakistani and Indian families over the last decade. Julie Archambault was awarded an ESRC grant to continue her research into Cruising through Uncertainty: mobile phones and mobility in Mozambique.
Mette Berg is leading a 14-month pilot study, La Lenin Transnational Project, to investigate the role of schools in reproducing privilege in socialist Cuba and within its diaspora. It focuses on the academically-selective VI Lenin Secondary School founded in Havana in 1972.
The Council for Museum Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association jointly awarded the 2011 Michael M. Ames prize to Innovative Museum Anthropology to Laura Peers (Curator of the Americas, Pitt Rivers Museum, Reader of Material Anthropology), Alison K. Brown (University of Aberdeen) and Heather Richardson (Head of Conservation, Pitt Rivers Museum) for their collaborative Blackfoot Shirts Project which brings together historic collections in the UK with Blackfoot people in Canada and the US.
Iain Walker was awarded a grant from the British Library Endangered Archives Programme in 2011 for the digitisation of the National Sound Archives of the Union of Comoros. The project, which is a joint one between the University of Oxford and the Comorian National Research Centre, will take 18 months to complete.
The Marett Lecturer for 2012 is Professor Adam Kuper. Dr Christina Riggs gave the 2012 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. In 2011 the department received recognition from the Computing Department and from the Vice Chancellor’s Teaching Awards for the excellence of the podcast collection.
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), Medical Anthropology (MSc and MPhil), Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology (MSc), and Migration Studies (MPhil). In October 2010, the MPhil Migration Studies was replaced by a Master’s degree in Migration Studies in association with the Oxford Department for International Development (ODID, formerly QEH). In October 2012 the Material Anthropology and Museum Ethnography (MSc and MPhil) and Visual Anthropology (MSc) degrees will be replaced in October 2012 with an MSc/MPhil programme in Visual, Material, and Museum Anthropology (VMMA).
Further details are available at:
www.isca.ox.ac.uk/prospective-students/degrees/
There are currently 108 students in total registered for doctorates in the department.
Full-time teaching staff
Marcus Banks (PhD Cambridge; Professor) Jainism, ethnicity and race, ethnographic film and visual representation; India, UK
Nadine Beckmann (DPhil Oxford; Lecturer) global politics of population and disease control, East Africa
Mette Berg (DPhil Oxford; Lecturer) Migration, transnationalism, diasporas, the Caribbean, Cuba, cosmopolitanism, gender
Morgan Clarke (DPhil Oxford) Arabic-speaking Middle East, Islam, law, (bio)ethics, kinship, modernity
Emma Cohen (PhD Belfast; Lecturer) cognition, Brazilian Amazon
Oliver Curry (PhD London; Lecturer) cognition, interpersonal coordination, social categorisation
Inge Daniels (PhD London; Lecturer) Visual and material culture, consumption, gift exchange, religion
Paul Dresch (DPhil Oxford; Lecturer) History, politics, tribalism, Islamic and customary law, semantic anthropology; Middle East (South Arabia)
Elizabeth Ewart (PhD 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 Oxford; Professor) Buddhism, Hinduism, traditional urbanism, healers and their relation to religion, ritual and symbolism; Asia, East Asia
Andrew Gosler (DPhil Oxford; Lecturer) Biological conservation, ornithology
Clare Harris (PhD 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 Cambridge; Professor) Chinese medicine in the PR of China and the diaspora especially East Africa, medical anthropology and linguistics; PRC, Tanzania
Iain Morley (PhD Cambridge; Lecturer) Palaeolithic archaeology, evolutionary origins of musical, ritual and religious behaviours
Christopher Morton (DPhil Oxford; Lecturer) historical photography of Africa, the visual history of anthropology
Mike O’Hanlon (PhD London; Professor/Director of the Pitt Rivers Museum) Visual anthropology, objectification and modernity, museology; New Guinea, Melanesia, Australia
Robert Parkin (DPhil Oxford; Lecturer) Kinship, religion, identity, history of anthropology; South Asia, Poland and Eastern Europe
Laura Peers (PhD 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 (DPhi, Oxford; Lecturer) Medical anthropology, population obesity, dance, embodiment, nutrition and human growth
David Pratten (PhD London; Lecturer/African Studies) Historical ethnography and colonialism, youth, violence and vigilantism; West Africa, Nigeria
Ramon Sarró (PhD London; Lecturer) Africa, Guinea, anthropology of religion
Stanley Ulijaszek (PhD 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 Oxford; Lecturer) Migration, governance, labour, India-China comparison
Head of Department: David Gellner; Marcus Banks (from October 2012)
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 Jennifer Bajorek (Researc Associate)
Dr Renate Barber (Research Associate)
Dr Ruth Barnes (Ashmolean Museum)
Dr Juliet Bedford (Postdoctoral Associate – ISCA)
Dr Sébastien Boret (Research Associate)
Professor Georgina Born (Research Associate, Department of Music)
Dr Jo Boyden (Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford Department of International Development)
Dr Marc Brightman (Research Associate)
Dr David Brown (Research Associate)
Dr Udi Butler (Research Associate)
Dr Helen Carr (Research Associate)
Dr Dawn Chatty (Queen Elizabeth House, Refugee Studies Centre)
Mr Támas Dávid-Barrett (Research Associate)
Dr Janette Davies (Research Associate – Queen Elizabeth House)
Dr Barbara Gerke (Research Associate)
Professor Roger Goodman (Nissan Institute)
Dr Matt Grove (Research Associate)
Dr Rachel Hall-Clifford (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 William Kelly (Research Associate)
Dr Peter Wynn Kirby (Research Associate)
Dr Philip Kreager (Research Associate)
Dr Anna Lavis (Research Associate)
Dr Chiara Letizia (Research Associate)
Dr Anna Lora-Wainwright (School of Geography and the Environment)
Dr Dominique Lussier (Research Associate)
Dr Nicholas Márquez-Grant (Research Associate)
Dr Ryan McKay (Research Associate)
Dr David Mills (Centre for Continuing Education)
Professor Judith Okely (Research Associate – Queen Elizabeth House)
Professor Stephen Oppenheimer (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)
Mr Iain Purdue (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 Sam Roberts (Research Associate)
Dr Yvan Russell (Research Associate)
Dr Judith Scheele (Research Associate – Postdoctoral Fellow, All Souls)
Dr Lidia Sciama (Research Associate – Queen Elizabeth House)
Dr Alison Shaw (Department of Public Health and Primary Care)
Dr Nando Sigona (Research Associate)
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 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)
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)
