Annals: Departmental reports and staff listings

University of Keele

School of Sociology and Criminology, Keele University, Staffordshire ST5 5BG

Departmental report

Jane Parish and Pnina Werbner remain the only anthropologists teaching in the sociology 'programme'. Judith Monks took early retirement though both she and Ronnie Frankenberg (Professor Emeritus) are affiliated with Keele. We have now been reconfigured (once again) into the School of Sociology and Criminology. There has been a recruitment of sociologists into the programme, mostly concerned with consumption, and the programme also includes two social gerontologists, one of whom, Dana Rosenfeld, was appointed as Reader in 2008.

Centre for Social, Cultural and Postcolonial Research

Additionally, Keele has created research institutes which are homes for doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows. Jane Parish (Ghana, African witchcraft, conspiracy theory, diaspora), Pnina Werbner (Islam, Pakistan, Botswana, migration and diaspora), Mark Featherstone (globalisation and postcolonial studies), Lisa Lau (South Asian Postcolonial Studies, with special reference to Sri Lanka, based in Human Geography), Deirdre McKay  (Economic Anthropology, the Philippines, Filipino international migration, based in Human Geography) and Farzana Shain (Pakistani youth culture, based in Education) are core members of the Centre for Social, Cultural and Postcolonial Research (SOCPOR) within the Research Institute of Law, Politics and Justice.  Most of the other sociologists are in the Research Institute for Life Course Studies (however, the Research Institutes at Keele are in the process of being reconfigured into a single Social Science Institute). We have two postdoctoral research fellows, both anthropologists, attached to the Centre: Mattia Fumanti and Claudia Liebelt. The Sociological Review Fellow is also based at the Centre. This annual award for a postdoctoral fellowship, funded by the Sociological Review which is owned by Keele University, was awarded in 2008 to an anthropologist, Michaela Benson.

Specific research activities

Pnina Werbner received three grants in the past three years. Two have now been completed - an ESRC for research on trade unions in Botswana within the Programme on Non-Governmental Public Actions (£50,000), an ESRC large grant (£210,000 both pre-full economic costing) to research New African Migrants in the Gateway City: Ethnicity, Religion, Citizenship, with a special emphasis on civic participation and ethnicity. This project included one postdoctoral fellow, Dr Mattia Fumanti, who graduated from the University Manchester and did his doctoral research on a provincial town in Namibia. This project ended with an end-of-award international conference on ‘Beyond Plurality in the African Diaspora: Ethnicity, Congregation, Networking and Citizenship’ which has produced a special double issue of African Diaspora to be published in 2010.  Finally, with Mark Johnson from Hull, she has been awarded an AHRC large grant within the Diaspora programme to study Filipinos in Israel, Saudi Arabia and Europe, again with special emphasis on sociality through religious belonging (£465,000 FEC): In the Footsteps of Jesus and the Prophet: Sociality, Caring and the Religious Imagination in the Filipino Diaspora. This 30 month project,which ends in January 2010 , included two junior postdoctoral fellows, one of whom, Claudia Liebelt, whose PhD was on Filipinas in Israel, has been based at Keele. The senior fellow on the project, Deirdre McKay, moved to Keele from ANU, Canberra, and was awarded a Senior Lectureship at Keele in 2009.  The project has had an international end-of-award conference at Keele on ‘Diasporic Encounters, Sacred Journeys: Gendered Migrants, Sociality and the Religious Imagination’and a follow-up conference for Filipino scholars and the team is planned for the Philippines in January 2010. A special double issue of the journal TAPJA (The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology) is in progress, to be published in 2010.

Sociology programme members

Graham Allan is head of School (Professor of Family and Community Studies)

Pnina Werbner (Professor of Social Anthropology)

Chris Phillipson (Professor of Urban Studies and Social Gerontology)

Dana Rosenfeld (Reader in Social Gerontology)

Jane Parish (Senior Lecturer, Director of Undergraduate Studies, Sociology)

Rebecca Leach (Senior Lecturer)

Lydia Martens (Senior Lecturer)

Mark Featherstone (Lecturer)

Siohban Holohan (Lecturer)

Andy Zieleniec (Lecturer)

Emma Head (Lecturer)

James Hardie-Bick (Lecturer)

Ronald Frankenberg (Professor Emeritus)

Judith Monks (Affiliate)

Mattia Fumanti (Research Fellow, Research Institute in Law, Politics and Justice)

Claudia Liebelt (Research Fellow, Research Institute in Law, Politics and Justice)

Michaela Benson (Sociological Review Fellow)