Anthropology

Presented by Dr David Mills (Oxford) at 'An Africanist's Legacy - A Workshop in Celebration of the Work of David Parkin' held at Oxford, 8-9 July 2010. Co-authored by Richard Vokes.

As social media posts from the slopes of Mount Everest become almost commonplace Dr Jolynna Sinanan (University of Manchester) focuses on digital media use amongst guides and porters and the impact of digital infrastructures in the area.

Professor Adriaan van Klinken takes us to the epicentre of Pentecostalism. Through the emerging body of queer Nigerian literature, Professor Adriaan van Klinken (University of Leeds) looks at the motif of the deliverance ritual in a lecture that spans anthropological, gender and sexuality, literary and religious studies.

Dr. Vonnak reflects on how socio historical events impact the definition, preservation, and sometimes neglect of cultural heritage. She draws from her extensive field work in Ukraine over the past eight years. Edited and hosted by Dora Duo.

Michael Degani analyzes the styles of work and conflict amongst electrical contractors who congregate across the street from a power utility office in urban Tanzania. Michael Degani (University of Cambridge) explores the balance of entrepreneurial hustle and bureaucratic order their long-running streetcorner bureau strikes. Edited and hosted by Peyton Cherry This was a departmental seminar at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography in the 2022-23 academic year. The recordings were only possible thanks to a team dedicated staff and students from The School: Executive Producers: Eben Kirksey and Stanley Ulijaszek Producer: Jacob Evans Sound Design: Seb Antoine Sound Recorders: Xinyuan (Connie) Wang and Jacob Evans

Philippe Descola, one of Anthropology's most influential figures, invites us to go beyond the traditional boundaries of nature and culture and redefine our understanding of humanity's relationship with the world around us. Philippe Descola (Emeritus professor, Collège de France, Paris) Edited and hosted by Luise Eder This was a departmental seminar at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography in the 2022-23 academic year. The recordings were only possible thanks to a team dedicated staff and students from The School: Executive Producers: Eben Kirksey and Stanley Ulijaszek Producer: Jacob Evans Sound Design: Seb Antoine Sound Recorders: Xinyuan (Connie) Wang and Jacob Evans

Raffaela Taylor-Seymourn examines the engagements with ancestral spirits among young queer Zimbabweans Raffaela Taylor-Seymourn (Pembroke College, University of Oxford) focuses on the form of kinship that young queer people forge with ancestral spirits and how they often contrast to relationships with living family members. Edited and hosted by Peyton Cherry This was a departmental seminar at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography in the 2022-23 academic year. The recordings were only possible thanks to a team dedicated staff and students from The School: Executive Producers: Eben Kirksey and Stanley Ulijaszek Producer: Jacob Evans Sound Design: Seb Antoine Sound Recorders: Xinyuan (Connie) Wang and Jacob Evans

Stanley Ulijaszek discusses human dietary evolution, dietary flexibility and present day undernutrition and infection Stanley Ulijaszek Emeritus Professor University of Oxford demonstrates the multidisciplinary nature of nutritional anthropology to confront major issues that are changing human relationships with disease. Edited and hosted by Jacob Evans This was a departmental seminar at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography in the 2022-23 academic year. The recordings were only possible thanks to a team dedicated staff and students from The School: Executive Producers: Eben Kirksey and Stanley Ulijaszek Producer: Jacob Evans Sound Design: Seb Antoine Sound Recorders: Xinyuan (Connie) Wang and Jacob Evans

Feminist anthropologist Tania Perez-Bustos discusses how immersion in the act of embroidery affects the body and enables collective reflection and listening. Tania Perez-Bustos (Universidad Nacional de Colombia) explores how the process of learning transforms an object to study ethnographically into an artifact with which to ask new ethnographic questions. Edited and hosted by Malin Schlode This was a departmental seminar at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography in the 2022-23 academic year. The recordings were only possible thanks to a team dedicated staff and students from The School: Executive Producers: Eben Kirksey and Stanley Ulijaszek Producer: Jacob Evans Sound Design: Seb Antoine Sound Recorders: Xinyuan (Connie) Wang and Jacob Evans

Does life take you any nearer to your ancestors or does it draw you ever further away from them? Tim Ingold discusses his new work ‘The Rise and Fall of Generation Now’ in which he reverses the perspectives on generations of social life by seeing not as linear but as a process. Edited and hosted by Luise Eder This was a departmental seminar at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography in the 2022-23 academic year. The recordings were only possible thanks to a team dedicated staff and students from The School: Executive Producers: Eben Kirksey and Stanley Ulijaszek Producer: Jacob Evans Sound Design: Seb Antoine Sound Recorders: Xinyuan (Connie) Wang and Jacob Evans

How do fishers and scientists read the uncertain terrain of the city in the sea? What stories does the urban sea hold for the futures of the city? Nikhil Anand (University of Pennsylvania) discusses his new work and reflects on the uncertain futures of coastal cities in an era of climate change. Edited and hosted by Lan Duo. This was a departmental seminar at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography in the 2022-23 academic year. The recordings were only possible thanks to a team dedicated staff and students from The School: Executive Producers: Eben Kirksey and Stanley Ulijaszek Producer: Jacob Evans Sound Design: Seb Antoine Sound Recorders: Xinyuan (Connie) Wang and Jacob Evans

Zsuzsanna Ihar leads us through field recordings captured in the marginal settlements of Baku, capital of Azerbaijan. She traces sounds that haunt, interrupt, and resist processes of gentrification, displacement, and capitalist profiteering. Edited and hosted by Eben Kirksey. This was a departmental seminar at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography in the 2022-23 academic year. The recordings were only possible thanks to a team dedicated staff and students from The School: Executive Producers: Eben Kirksey and Stanley Ulijaszek Producer: Jacob Evans Sound Design: Seb Antoine Sound Recorders: Xinyuan (Connie) Wang and Jacob Evans

Peidong Yang (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) presented this seminar as part of the COMPAS/Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group seminar series on 14 January 2019

This Evolutionary Medicine and Public Health seminar was presented by Professor Daniel Nettle (Newcastle University) on 16 January 2019

This COMPAS/Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group seminar was presented by Elena Barabantseva (University of Manchester) on 21 January 2019

Professor Jonathan Wells (University College London) delivered this seminar as part of the Evolutionary Medicine and Public Health series on 23 January 2019

Elaine Ho (National University of Singapore) delivered this seminar as part of the COMPAS/Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group series on 28 January 2019

Professor Gracia Liu-Farrer (Waseda University, Tokyo) delivered this seminar as part of the COMPAS/Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group series on 4 February 2019

Hal Drakesmith (Radcliffe Department of Medicine, Oxford) delivered this seminar as part of the Evolutionary Medicine and Public Health series on 6 February 2019

Sean Wang (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin) delivered this seminar as part of the COMPAS/Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group series on 11 February 2019

An Evolutionary Medicine and Public Health seminar delivered by Professor Barry Bogin (Loughborough University) on 13 February 2019

A COMPAS/Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group seminar delivered by Professor Andrea Whittaker (Monash University) on 18 February 2019

Professor Pei-Chia Lan (National Taiwan University) delivered this COMPAS/Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group seminar on 25 February 2019

Professor Francis Collins (University of Waikato) delivered this COMPAS/Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group seminar on 4 March 2019

Professor Dan Sarewitz delivered this seminar at the Institute for Science Innovation and Society on 4 March 2019

Alex Alvergne (Oxford) delivered this seminar on 6 March 2019 as part of the Primate Conversations seminar series

A presentation by Professor Brenda Yeoh (National University of Singapore) for the COMPAS/Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group seminar (11 March 2019)

This Anthropology Departmental Seminar was given by Bhawani Buswala, University of Oxford, on 30 November 2018.

An Evolutionary Medicine and Public Health seminar presented by Tetyana Vasylyeva (Department of Zoology, University of Oxford) on 24 October 2018

An Evolutionary Medicine and Public Health seminar presented by Kesson Magid (Department of Anthropology, University of Durham) on 7 November 2018

An Evolutionary Medicine and Public Health seminar presented by Abigail Page (Department of Anthropology, University College London) on 14 November 2018

An Evolutionary Medicine and Public Health seminar presented by Dr Gillian Pepper (Centre for Behaviour and Evolution, University of Newcastle) on 28 November 2018

David Pratten, the University of Oxford, presented the Anthropology Departmental Seminar on 9 November 2018

Michelle Pentecosts, King's College London, presented the Anthropology Departmental Seminar on 2 November 2018

Frederick Keck, Musée du quai Branly, presented this Anthropology Departmental Seminar on 26 October 2018

This Anthropology Departmental Seminar was given by Jok Madut Jok, SUNY Upstate Medical University, on 23 November 2018

This Anthropology Departmental Seminar was delivered by Dr Eva Reindl (University of Oxford) on 2 February 2018

This Anthropology Departmental Seminar was delivered by Dr Paolo Heywood (University of Cambridge) on 25 May 2018

This Anthropology Departmental Seminar was delivered by Professor Marcio Goldman (National Museum, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) on 11 May 2018

This Anthropology departmental Seminar was delivered by Professor Maya Unnithan (University of Sussex) on 26 January 2018

Nayanika Mathur (Oxford) delivered this Anthropology Departmental Seminar on 5 May 2018

This Anthropology Departmental Seminar was delivered by Oliver Scott Curry (Oxford) on 18 May 2018

The Marett Memorial Lecture for 2018 (27 April) was given by Professor Anne-Christine Taylor (emeritus; Director of Research at the CNRS) on the Amazonian 'Individualism' of the Jivaroan people of Ecuador and Peru

An Anthropology Departmental Seminar delivered by Rafael Schacter (University College London) on 1 December 2017

An Anthropology Departmental Seminar delivered by Elizabeth Ewart and Wolde Tadesse (School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, Oxford) on 13 October 2017

An Anthropology Departmental Seminar by Michael Jackson (Emeritus Professor of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School), 20 October 2017

Michael Jackson, Distinguished Visiting Professor of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School, delivered the Astor Visiting Lecture at Oxford on 19 October 2017. Introduced by Ramon Sarró (Oxford). Abstract: 'In this talk, I share some vignettes from my recent fieldwork among African migrants living in Copenhagen, Amsterdam and London in order to reflect on the cultural and strategic reasons why migrants are often averse to speaking their minds, telling their stories, or sharing their feelings. In linking this parsimony in speech to economy in consumption, I explore not simply what words mean or are made to mean, but what words do – their social effects, their political repercussions, and their practical entailments. In this endeavor I am, to some extent, echoing Wittgenstein’s proposition that ‘one cannot guess how a word functions. One has to look at its use and learn from that,’ though I am also mindful of Malinowski’s emphasis on language as ‘a mode of action rather than as a countersign of thought.’ Words and Deeds

The inaugural Geoffrey Harrison Prize Lecture delivered in Oxford on 3 November 2017 by Melissa Parker, Professor of Medical Anthropology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

A talk by Robert Foley (University of Cambridge) for Possible Futures, an event held at the Oxford University Natural History Museum on 3 November 2016 that celebrated the relaunch of Biological Anthropology at the University of Oxford.

A talk by Rebecca Sear (Dept. of Population Health) for Possible Futures, an event held at the Oxford University Natural History Museum on 3 November 2016 that celebrated the relaunch of Biological Anthropology at the University of Oxford.

A talk by Peter Walsh (University of Cambridge) for Possible Futures, an event held at the Oxford University Natural History Museum on 3 November 2016 that celebrated the relaunch of Biological Anthropology at the University of Oxford.

A talk by Charlotte Roberts (University of Durham) for Possible Futures, an event held at the Oxford University Natural History Museum on 3 November 2016 that celebrated the relaunch of Biological Anthropology at the University of Oxford.

Alexandra Alvergne and Nicholas Márquez-Grant introduce Possible Futures, an event held at the Oxford University Natural History Museum on 3 November 2016 that celebrated the relaunch of Biological Anthropology at the University of Oxford.

This talk was given by Dr Peter Walsh (University of Cambridge) at the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine on 3 November 2016/

This Anthropology Departmental Seminar was given by Jarrett Zigon (University of Virginia) on 2 December 2016.

In this Anthropology Departmental Seminar, Ed Simpson (SOAS) discusses the issues raised by the re-study of an Indian village. 25 November 2016.

This Anthropology Departmental Seminar was given by Roger Sansi-Roca (Goldsmiths, University of London) on 18 November 2016.

In this Departmental Seminar, Maya Mayblin (University of Edinburgh) discusses the relatively late and most challenged rule in the Brazilian Catholic Church - celibacy. 4 November 2016.

In this Anthropology Departmental Seminar, Maia Green (University of Manchester) discusses village savings associations and small-scale credit in Sub-Saharan Africa. 28 October 2016.

The opening Evans-Pritchard Lecture for 2017 given by Dr Naor Ben-Yehoyada (Columbia University) on 1 May. The theme of the series was: 'Getting Cosa Nostra: Knowledge and Criminal Justice in Southwestern Sicily'.

The 2017 Mary Douglas Memorial Lecture was given in Oxford on 24 May by Prof. Pat Caplan of Goldsmiths, London.

The Keynote speech by Tim Lewens (Professor of Philosophy of Science, Cambridge) for the Cultural Evolution Workshop held at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, on 28 February 2017

Prof. Paul Harris (Harvard Graduate School of Education) examines why children are skeptical about magical phenomena but are willing to believe in supposedly miraculous violations of everyday causal constraints. 12 May 2017.

A seminar of the Anthropology Research Group at Oxford on Eastern Medicines and Religions. Dr Ann R. David (University of Roehampton) focuses on Tamil worshippers in the UK to discuss the role of ritual in religion and dance. 18 January 2017.

In this Departmental Seminar, Prof. Steve Rayner examines the blossoming of anthropological attention to climate change over the last ten years. 17 February 2017.

In this Departmental Seminar, Dr Franck Düvell (COMPAS) focuses on the great migration of 2015 when it is estimated that 12 million people were newly displaced. 20 January 2017.

Prof. Elizabeth B. Silva (The Open University) discusses the role of staged events in remembering the establishment of dictatorship in Brazil in 1964. 19 May 2017.

In this Departmental Seminar, Prof. Barbara Harriss-Whiten draws on anthropology, economics and politics to examine the role of women in Indian society. 12 May 2017.

Greg Carr, the President of the Gorongosa Restoration Project in Mozambique, gives an overview of how the Gorongosa National Park has evolved since Mozambique's civil conflict ended in 1992. 5 May 2017.

Filip De Boeck (KU Leiden) explores 'urban life between want and wish', drawing on examples from the DRCongo (4 March 2016)

Jennifer Diggins (Oxford Brookes) discusses 'tales of poverty, fish, and seduction from maritime Sierra Leone' (26 February 2016)

Joy Hendry (Oxford Brookes) examines indigenous knowledge and specific projects across the world, including Canada, Australia and New Zealand (13 May 2016)

Marta Rosa Jardim (UNIFESP, Brazil) examines the role of sculptures of Hindu gods in Mozambique and the influence of art history on her anthropological research (20 May 2016)

Lucy Lowe (Edinburgh) discusses motherhood, Caesarean sections and migration in 'Little Mogadishu', Mairobi (3 Fecember 2015)

Mathijs Pelkmans (LSE)'s seminar is based on 'walking with the Tablighi Jammat in Kyrgyzstan (12 February 2016)

Andrew Sanchez (Kent) discusses why a multi-ethnic workforce in eastern India exchanges jokes about each other's religion and cultures as a form of irony (19 February 2016)

Ian Rickard (Durham) places the origins of the science of health and disease within a framework of evolutionary theory and a medical anthropology perspective (18 January 2016)

Emma Pomeroy (Cambridge) places obstructed labour within an evolutionary perspective. A medical anthropology seminar given on 15 February 2016.

Cristina Giuliani (Bologna) places inflammaging, and genetics, within an evolutionary perspective. A medical anthropology seminar given on 1 February 2016.

Charlotte K. Russell (Parent-Infant Sleep Lab, Durham) looks at how evolutionary anthropology and cross-cultural perspectives can have a huge impact on specific healthcare issues such as SIDS (22 February 2016)

James G. Morgan (Dept of Anaesthesia & Intensive Care, Leeds General Infirmary) discusses how an evolutionary approach can help one understand medicine, such as adaptive defence mechanisms in the body (8 February 2016)

Jonathan Wells (UCL Institute of Child Health) presents an intergenerational perspective on the development origins of health and disease. A medical anthropology seminar given on 29 February 2016.

Nuno Fario (Oxford) investigates the development of HIV since the discovery of its first, and diverse, genomes in 1959 and 1960. A medical anthropology seminar given on 7 March 2016.

A special lecture by Dr Fraser Sugden, a Kathmandu-based social scientist at the International Water Management Institute (19 May 2016)

Professor Thomas Hylland Eriksen (Oslo) delivered 2016's Marett Memorial Lecture on 29 April at Exeter College. The lecture examined controversies over Creole identity which are related to fundamental questions in anthropology.

In this Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group seminar, Ginny Mounce (Oxford) discusses couples' experiences of investigating and starting infertility treatments, 19 October 2015

In this Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group seminar, Ingrid Gramme (Oxford) discusses how our basic understanding of pregnancy and miscarriage has changed enormously over the last eighty years, 9 November 2015

In this Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group seminar, Susie Kilshaw (UCL), discusses the impact of pregnancy and loss on mothers and fathers, and other family members, in Qatar, 2 November 2015

In this Anthropology Departmental Seminar, César Enrique Giraldo Herrera (Oxford) discusses the role of hallucinogenics in interpreting reality and the role of visions in Lowland South America, 23 October 2015 (the opening few seconds are missing)

In this Anthropology Departmental Seminar, Idalina Baptista (Oxford), discusses the governance of electricity in urban sub-Saharan Africa, drawing on a case study focused on Maputo, Mozambique, 13 November 2015

In this Anthropology Departmental Seminar, Lauren Greenwood (University of Sussex) discusses the complexities of collaboration with the British military, 29 May 2015

In this Fertility and Reproduction Seminar, Raj Rai (Imperial College and St Mary's Hospital) discusses the role of clinical trials and ways of addressing the potential exploitation of vulnerable couples, 26 October 2015

In this Anthropology Departmental Seminar, Alma Gottlieb (Illinois) discusses the blend of religious traditions that have developed on the Cape Verde islands, particularly early Jewish settlers, 6 November 2015

An Anthropology Departmental Seminar presented by Megan Warin (Adelaide) on the ways in which obesity is understood, embodied and enacted, 16 October 2015

An Anthropology Departmental seminar presented by Susana Carvalha (Oxford) on the archaeological sites of non-humans, 27 November 2015

Pregnancy loss and miscarriage in the ancient Near East - a Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group seminar, 30 November 2015 given by Marie-Françoise Besnier (University of Cambridge)

In this Anthropology departmental seminar, Paloma Gay y Blasco (St Andrews) evaluates a twenty-year collaborative project she has undertaken with her Gypsy informer (15 May 2015)

Professor Jeffrey C. Alexander (Yale University) delivered the Mary Douglas Memorial Lecture on 3 June 2014 at Oxford. The lecture was 'The societalization of social problems: recent social crises and the civil sphere' Drawing from cultural sociology, this lecture develops a theory of “societalization” to explain social reaction to three recent, globally significant upheavals – the financial crisis, church pedophilia, and media phone-hacking. While these problems were endemic for years and even decades, they had failed to generate broad crises: Reactions were confined inside institutional boundaries and handled by intra-institutional elites according to the cultural logics of their particular spheres. When intra-institutional strains become interpreted as challenges to civil discourse and interests, there is societalization. Inter-sphere boundaries become tense and there is widespread anguish about social justice and the future of democratic society. A war of the spheres ensues and, eventually, there is movement back to steady state. Societalization cannot prevent the future eruption of social strains. In a differentiated and plural society, tensions between spheres is endemic, and civil repair depends upon the possibilities generated by societalization.

Dimitris Papadopoulos (University of Leicester) discusses different ways to think about technoscience beyond its core institutions (13 March 2015)