Annals: Departmental reports and staff listings
University of East London
School of Social Sciences, Cultural and Media Studies, University of East London, UEL Docklands Campus, 4-6 University Way, London E16 2RD
Degrees offered in Anthropology
Undergraduate: B.Sc (Hons) Anthropology, B.Sc (Hons) Anthropology with Native American Studies, Anthropology major, joint and minor combined honours degrees with International Development, Politics, Sociology.
Postgraduate: MSc Anthropology: Evolutionary Approaches to Cultural Anthropology and Archaeology, MA Refugee Studies, MPhil/PhD
Departmental report
The Anthropology programme at University of East London is part of the School of Social Sciences, Media and Cultural Studies on the Docklands Campus, facilitating a wide range of joint and combined degrees. Students at UEL are taught anthropology as a radical and unifying discipline, incorporating both evolutionary and social anthropology, alongside archaeology. Through linking these fields, we attempt to address anthropology’s central question: ‘What does it mean to be human?’
Research, conferences and appointments
Dr Paul Valentine’s co-edited volume Revenge in Lowland South America with Prof Stephen Beckerman was published by Florida UP in 2008. Dr Narmala Halstead’s Knowing how to know. Fieldwork and the ethnographic present, co-edited with Eric Hirsch and Judith Okely, was published by Berghahn in 2008. Prof Chris Knight is co-editing two volumes, The Prehistory of Language and The Cradle of Language with Prof Rudie Botha, to be published by Oxford UP late in 2008.
Teaching and student activities
Anthropology at UEL maintains a steady intake of 30 plus undergraduate students each year, and has a growing number of research students being supervised by Anthropology staff. Each year, three to four undergraduate students gain a placement on the exchange programme with University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, while UEL receives the same number of students from UNM for a year in London.
Strong emphasis is placed on academic attainment, with considerable value added for students from backgrounds that traditionally receive little academic support. Practical fieldwork skills are developed throughout the undergraduate programme, but extra-curricular activities also form an important part of the Anthropology degree programme, including fieldtrips to Pembrokeshire, Avebury and Stonehenge, Wiltshire and Lewes, Sussex. The University of East London Samba Band is a highly popular initiative of anthropologists with a frequent presence at events in the local community and wider London life.
Teaching Staff
Giorgia Doná (PhD, Queen's University, Canada; Senior Lecturer) Refugees, children in difficult circumstances; humanitarian assistance; mental health and psychosocial issues.
Narmala Halstead (PhD; Senior Lecturer) Anthropology of conflict; human rights; ethnicity and nationalism.
Chris Knight (PhD, London, UCL; Professor) Evolutionary emergence of language; origins of culture, ritual and religion.
John McGovern (PhD, Oxford; Senior Lecturer) Political anthropology.
Camilla Power (PhD, London, UCL; Senior Lecturer) Evolution of ritual; cosmetics; gender ritual, cosmology and evolutionary ecology of African hunter-gatherers.
Derek Robbins (PhD, Cambridge; Professor) Bourdieu, Lévy-Bruhl; history and philosophy of Social Anthropology.
Lionel Sims (MSc, London, LSE, UCL, Surrey; Principal Lecturer) Research methods; carnival studies; Megalith cultures of the Neolithic/Bronze Age.
Merl Storr (PhD, York; Senior Lecturer) Urban ethnography; gender and sexuality; material culture; surrealism.
Paul Valentine (PhD, Penn State; Senior Lecturer) evolutionary ecology of Amazonian Indians; kinship and paternity; health and medicine.
Other staff
Administrator: Mrs Diane Ball
Programme Coordinator: Camilla Power
Special programme
The Subject Area runs an exchange programme with the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, USA. A one-year placement in the UNM anthropology Department is sandwiched between the first two years and the final year of the BSc programme.
Special Resources
School of Samba (percussion, dance, masquerade); access link with Radical Anthropology Group part-time evening course and Certificate in Anthropology.
