News
Prize winner
Emma Ford, currently a student on the MA in Anthropological Research, won the 'Judge's Award (Poster)' at the recent Durham Postgraduate Anthropology Conference, for her poster on her proposed doctoral research project which looks at 'Shifting perceptions of experience: the relationship between individual religiosity and social cohesion among Christian Surfers'. The judges liked the poster's strong central theme and the innovative methodology section and said that, of all the poster projects presented, it was the one they would be most interested to read if it was published as a book.
New articles out on the Anthropology of Britain
Jeanette Edwards, Gillian Evans and Katherine Smith: a theme section on Class, community and crisis in post-industrial Britain
Did you know? Social Anthropology at Manchester has a long tradition in the Anthropology of Britain. In addition to Jeanette Edwards, Gillian Evans and Katherine Smith, Sarah Green, Hannah Knox and many of our postgraduate students work in this field as well.
Undergraduate receives Estonian scholarship
Congratulations to first year student, Katheriin Liibert, who has been awarded a scholarship from the Estonian Scholarship Fund to help fund her next academic year studying Social Anthropology at Manchester. Well done, Katheriin!
PhD Students receive Wenner-Gren conference grant
Congratulations to Social Anthropology PhD students Carna Brkovic, Andy Hodges and Vanja Celebicic, and our former PhD student Marina Simic, who were awarded a Wenner-Gren conference grant for a three-day international conference entitled 'Anthropology Otherwise: Rethinking Approaches To Fieldwork In Different Anthropological Traditions', held in Serbia in Summer 2011.
Granada Centre presence at 12th Royal Anthropological Institute Film Festival, June 2011
Twelve films produced through the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology were selected for the leading ethnographic film festival in the UK. Eight of these were produced through the MA in Visual Anthropology, two through the PhD programme (Andre Cicalo, Alyssa Grossman) and two were made by members of staff (Rupert Cox, Andy Lawrence). In addition, two Granada Centre alumnae (Rossella Schillaci, Alex Boudreault-Fournier) had their most recent films selected. This edition of the festival saw the launching of the Richard Werbner Film Prize, funded from royalties generated by the films produced by the Granada Centre's Research Professor, Dick Werbner. Congratulations to one and all!
The Emrys Peters Essay Prize
The School of Social Sciences at the University of Manchester, hosts the above prize, which was founded by a gift from Mrs Stella Peters, in memory of her husband, Professor Emrys Lloyd Peters, who taught in the Department of Social Anthropology between 1955 and 1984.
The Prize is offered for the best essay, of 9000 words (including notes, excluding bibliography), on "an anthropological topic which falls within any area of Social Anthropology". It will be open to any student who, at the annual closing date, is completing or has just completed a postgraduate degree at a university in the United Kingdom. Those wishing to enter should send TWO COPIES of their essays to Lynn Dignan, Social Sciences Undergraduate Office, Arthur Lewis Building, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL. The closing date was 12 noon, 28th October 2011. The next closing date will be 12 noon, 26 October 2012.
The winners for 2011 were, jointly, Alexander Parkinson (PhD student, Manchester) for “Ethnography and the Financialization of Market Conduct: Personal Relations and Cyborg Workstations in Stockbroking”; and Paolo Heywood (PhD student, Cambridge) for “Whose Wor(l)d is it Anyway? Ontology in Philosophy and Anthropology” (we cannot post this essay on-line as it will appear in the newly re-launched journal Cambridge Anthropology 30 (1), Spring 2012).
The winner of the 2010 competition was Joe Webster, a doctoral candidate at Edinburgh University, with an essay entitled, "I Got Saved at the Sea": 'Born-Again' Testimony in a Scottish Fishing Village".
Association of Political and Legal Anthropology Honourable Mention
Congratulations to Ainhoa Montoya (PhD candidate in Social Anthropology) for receiving First Honourable Mention from the Association of Political and Legal Anthropology student paper prize committee. Ainhoa's paper entitled, 'The Politics of Fear and the Shadow State in Post-War El Salvador' was recognised at the APLA meetings in New Orleans in November 2010.
Visiting scholars
Kath Weston (Professor of Anthropology and Studies in Women and Gender, University of Virginia) visited us in Autumn 2011 to give a number of seminar papers and a master class.
Professor Dipesh Chakrabarty came to Manchester as a Visiting Hallsworth Professor to give a distinguished lecture on 15 October 2010. The title of his talk was "Between Globalisation and Global Warming: the long and short of human history."
2009-10 was a particularly busy year for events in Social Anthropology and in Visual Anthropology. In addition to a full set of weekly seminars, we had several distinguished visiting scholars, including Tim Ingold (13th-16th October 2009), Susan Gal (University of Chicago, Spring 2010) and Kathleen Stewart (University of Texas, Spring 2010).