Annals: Departmental reports and staff listings

LSE

London School of Economics and Political Science
Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/anthropology

Departmental Report

Staff

The Department is very sad to announce the death of Emeritus Professor Peter Loizos, on Friday 2nd March. He is remembered with great fondness as an excellent teacher and an extraordinarily supportive colleague and friend. There will be a memorial for Peter at LSE on 18 May 2012.

Dr Heonik Kwon left us in September 2011 to take up post as Professorial Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge.

In September 2011, the Department welcomed Dr Jason Hickel, Dr George St Clair, and Mr Stuart Thompson as LSE fellows, In 2011, we welcomed Dr Emmanuel de Vienne and Dr Eve Zucker as Visiting Fellows.

In September 2011, Professor Stephan Feuchtwang was made an Emeritus Professor at the School. As a recipient of a research grant, he has been appointed to a part-time position at the Asia Research Centre, but retains active links with the Anthropology Department, where he continues to supervise a number of students and participates regularly in our Friday seminars.

Emeritus Professor Maurice Bloch is employed in a part-time capacity in the department, where he continues to contribute to teaching at both undergraduate and graduate level. Emeritus Professors Jonathan Parry and Chris Fuller were appointed to part-time positions in the department in February 2012. They will be contributing to graduate teaching, research student supervision and professional development, and the research life of the department.

Dr Mette High has been in the dept as a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, and Dr Ron Jennings has been in the dept as a Newton Fellow.

Research

The Department is launching a new Programme for the study of Religion and non-Religion, drawing on expertise across the board, but involving Drs Cannell, Engelke, Pelkmans and Scott in particular. It will be integrated with the LSE’s existing Forum on Religion, and will draw on a rich seam of interdisciplinary expertise across the school.

Deborah James has been PI on a major ESRC award study 'Investing, engaging in enterprise, gambling and getting into debt: popular economies and citizen expectations in South Africa’ to study popular economies in South Africa. http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/anthropology/popular_economies.htm, which ended in October 2010.

She has also been awarded an LSE seed fund award for a project entitled Rights Welfare and Law. Legal Aid Advocacy in Austerity Britain, together with Dr Alice Forbess.

Laura Bear received a two-year ESRC research grant to study neoliberal transformations of Kolkatas Hooghly River, as well as an ESRC Research Seminars grant with Stephan Feuchtwang on the theme 'Conflicts in Time: Rethinking 'Contemporary' Globalisation', to develop work on different and conflicting temporalities in various settings.

Catherine Allerton has been awarded a British Academy mid-career fellowship for her study on Childhood in the migrant city: Statelessness, exclusion and modes of belonging amongst children of irregular migrants and refugees in East Malaysia.

Charles Stafford and Rita Astuti have been awarded an LSE seed fund award for a project run as part of their Programme in culture, cognition and cooperation (PCCC).

The Department’s 2011 application to the Annual Fund for a number of projects was successful. This included the following:

• Programme for Study of Religion and Non-Religion
• Conference: Irony, Justice and the Chinese State, organized by Hans Steinmuller
• Public Lecture: Land and the Political Economy of Development in India since Liberalization, by Akhil Gupta (UCLA)
• The International Criminal Court and the Meaning of Cosmopolitan Criminal Law, organized by Ron Jennings

Alongside the weekly Friday Research Seminar on Anthropological Theory, the Department has hosted regular seminars on Ethnographic Perspectives on Work and Labour, SWANA (South West Asia and North Africa), Taiwan in Comparative Perspective, Africa, and Latin America.

The Department has also hosted/will be hosting the following special workshops and events:

• 2010 Malinowski Memorial Lecture, given by Dr Rane Willerslev, May 2010
• Understanding China and Engaging with Chinese People: the 100th Anniversary of the birth of Professor Fei Xiaotong, CCPN, December 2010
• Conflicts in Time Seminar, 2010 & 2011
• Culture and Cognition Seminar, May 2010 & January/March 2011
• Transforming your PhD Thesis into a Book, May 2011
• 2011 Malinowski Memorial Lecture, given by Dr. Tobias Kelly, May 2011
• Anthropology in London, Dr Andrew Sanchez delivered his workshop Honour, Conflict and Coercion: The Anthropology of Violence, held at the British Museum Education Centre, 2011
• University of London Latin America Workshop, organised with UCL, June 2011
• The Problem of Freedom: Ethics, Autonomy and Rights in South Asia, July 2011
• Indian Documentary Film Festival, November 2011
• Professor Maurice Bloch talk, celebrating Westermark’s academic life, November 2011
• The Return of the Indian: An Interdisciplinary Seminar on Class and Ethnicity in the Andes, February 2012
• God's Money Makers: Volatile Markets and the Problem of Planning a Life, Lecture by Caitlin Zaloom, March 2012
• 2012 Malinowski Memorial Lecture, given by Dr. Alpha Shah, May 2012
• Land and the Political Economy of Development in India since Liberalization, Lecture by Professor Akhil Gupta, June 2012
• Anthropology in London 2012: Certainty?, Conference co-organised with all London Anthropology departments, June 2012

Professor Marshall Sahlins was nominated by the Department to receive an honorary doctorate, the highest honour LSE can bestow. The degree was awarded at the December 2011 graduation ceremony.

Postgraduate Training

The Department currently has 55 MPhil/PhD students (March 2012). See website for list of completed PhDs.

We have continued with attempts to ensure that PhD students and researchers from the different London Departments get together and share research. In addition to cross-college initiatives and seminars, we were involved with the fifth one-day workshop Anthropology in London, embracing the whole of London anthropology in June 2011, and have been active in co-organizing the sixth one, on June 11th 2012. The event also involved the anthropology departments at Brunel, Goldsmiths, LSE, SOAS, UCL, and UEL.

Teaching

The Department renewed its PhD exchange scheme with Columbia University under the new GPPN; details can be found at http://www2.lse.ac.uk/anthropology/degree_programmes/columbia_exchange.aspx

This agreement started in 2009 and runs for five years.

We have introduced the following new programmes for the 2011/12 academic year:

MSc Social Anthropology (Learning and Cognition) (previously a separate degree, now a stream of the regular MSc)
MSc Anthropology and Development Management

In 2013/4, we will introduce a further new programme

MSc Religion in the Contemporary World.

Department Staff List

Academic Staff

Dr Catherine Allerton
[on research leave 2012-13]
Eastern Indonesia; place and landscape, houses, kinship and marriage, childhood and schooling.

Professor Rita Astuti
Madagascar; kinship, gender, anthropology of death, cognitive development and cultural transmission; ethnographic and experimental research methods.

Dr Mukulika Banerjee
[on sabbatical and special leave LT&ST 2012]
South Asia; political anthropology, popular perceptions of democracy and the culture of elections, fashion and public culture, Muslim societies.

Dr Laura Bear
[on sabbatical leave  LT 2012]
South Asia: anthropology of the state, temporality, neo-liberalism, globalisation, labour.

Dr Fenella Cannell
[on sabbatical leave LT 2012]
Lowland Philippines, United States; anthropology of Christianity, healing and mediumship, gender, Mormonism and kinship.

Dr Matthew Engelke
Zimbabwe, England; Christianity and the Bible, semiotics, materiality, public religion, history of anthropology, human rights.

Professor Deborah James
[Head of Department 2009-12, on sabbatical leave 2012-13]
South Africa; political economy, civil society and the state, land reform and property regimes, development and migration, ethnicity, ethnomusicology, HIV/AIDS and reproductive health.

Professor Martha Mundy
[special leave 2012]
Arab societies; law, agrarian systems, sociology of Islam, historical anthropology, kinship.

Dr Mathijs Pelkmans
Caucasus (Republic of Georgia), Central Asia (Kyrgyz Republic); anthropology of borders, political anthropology, anthropology of religion.

Dr Michael W. Scott
Oceania; Melanesia; ontology; cosmology; place-making; myth-making; Christianity; 'cargo cults'; historical anthropology.

Professor Charles Stafford
China and Taiwan; learning, schooling and child development, cognitive anthropology, the relationship between learning and economic life.

Dr Hans Steinmuller
China; political and economic anthropology, moralities and ethics, irony, ritual, gambling.

Dr Harry Walker
Lowland South America; personhood and relatedness, language ideologies, materiality, exchange.

Research and LSE Fellows

Dr Alonso Barros  [LSE Fellow in the Anthropology of Modern Law]
Mesoamerica, Latin America; historical anthropology of law, indigenous peoples' human rights, time politics and historicities, territorialities, world anthropologies, cultural commodity fetishism and communal ontologies.

Dr Thomas Grisaffi| [LSE Fellow]
Andes: anthropology of democracy, community radio, the cocaine trade, social movements.

Dr Jason Hickel| [LSE Fellow]
South Africa: democracy, development, political conflict, vigilante violence, xenophobia, labor and migrancy, ritual and witchcraft.

Dr Mette High [British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellow]
Mongolia; economic transformations, illegality, gendered hierarchies, cosmology and landscape.

Dr Ronald Jennings [Newton International Fellow]
Cosmopolitan spaces and subjectivities; global criminal tribunals; political and legal anthropology; cosmopolitanism, tradition and modernity; the concept of the political.

Dr Nicolas Martin| [LSE Fellow]
Pakistan; Landlords; domination; Islam.

Dr Andrew Sanchez| [LSE Fellow]
South Asia; class and labour, trade unions, organised crime and corruption.

Dr George St Clair|  [LSE Fellow]
Brazil, Latin America; Christianity, Pentecostalism, utopian religion and urban life, anthropology of religion, identity.

Administrative Staff

Ms Yanina Hinrichsen
Departmental Manager

Ms Camilla Griffiths
Administrator (Tuesday - Thursday)

Mr Tomas Hinrichsen
Administrator (Monday & Friday)

Visiting Staff

Dr Ruy Blanes [Visiting Fellow]
Africa; Angola; prophetic Christianity; memory; mobility and transnationalism; knowledge and rationality.

Professor John Bowen [Visiting Professor]

Dr Emmanuel de Vienne [Visiting Fellow]
Lowland South America; shamanism; sickness; cultural transmission; pragmatics.

Dr Henrike Donner [Visiting Senior Fellow]
India; gender and kinship; education; reproductive change; middle class lifestyles; urban space and politics.

Dr Dena Freeman [Visiting Fellow]
Ethiopia; cultural transformation; happiness and wellbeing; culture, cognition and emotion; international development; Pentecostalism.

Professor Adam Kuper [Visiting Professor]
South Africa.

Dr Will Norman [Visiting Fellow]
Social innovation, social enterprise and public policy.

Dr Eve Zucker [Visiting Fellow]
Anthropology of Cambodia and the topics of social change, post-conflict recovery, memory and morality.

Retired, Emeritus and Part-time Academic Staff

Professor Maurice Bloch
Madagascar; religion and politics, cognition and culture, kinship.

Professor Stephan Feuchtwang
China and Taiwan, Germany; Chinese popular religion, the anthropology of history, life stories, family myths and responses to catastrophic loss, comparison of civilisations and empires.

Professor Jean La Fontaine
East Africa, United Kingdom; kinship, children, incest, ritual, witchcraft and Satanism.

Professor Chris Fuller
South Asia; India and Hinduism, South Indian temples, religion and politics, globalisation and information technology, Tamil Brahman society and history.

Professor Ioan Lewis
Somalia and the Horn of Africa; shamanism, Islam and traditional societies, witchcraft and cannibalism.

Professor Jonathan Parry
South Asia; sociology of Hinduism, caste and other forms of inequality, industrialisation, labour and the anthropology of work.

Dr James Woodburn
Sub-Saharan Africa; hunting and gathering societies, egalitarian political systems.