Our Research
The Social Anthropology department – now known as a DA, 'discipline area', in Manchester – is one of the largest in the UK. Founded by the Manchester School, it has a distinguished and distinctive history of innovation in ethnographic research that upset boundaries. Today anthropology at Manchester is committed to pushing the contemporary horizons of the discipline. Our current research projects, and our leadership of collaborative research groups across the faculty of humanities create opportunities to meet new research challenges and raise exciting new anthropological questions.
The hallmarks of this rich intellectual culture are Social Anthropology's weekly Monday seminar in which we host anthropologists from across the UK and all over the world, and the annual meeting of Group for Debates in Anthropological Theory (GDAT). Social Anthropology has, over the last few years, enjoyed visits by senior scholars who come as Visiting Professors with the support of either the Hallsworth or the Simon Trusts. We have enjoyed visits from Don Kulick, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Joel Robbins, Chris Gregory, Annelise Riles, Virginia Dominguez, Verena Stolcke, and Susan Gal.
This year we will be hosting Jon Altman and Dipesh Chakrabarty.
A Wide Breadth of Regional Expertise and Research Interests
One of the strengths of Social Anthropology at Manchester is the variety of staff research interests, which are detailed in the information given for each member of staff and in the pages on current research projects. We have important research interests in Sub-Saharan Africa (4 staff, 5 PhDs), Asia (4 staff, 3 PhDs) and Oceania (2 staff, 4 PhDs). We have concentrations of interest in Latin America (5 staff, 13 PhDs) and Europe (8 staff, 9 PhDs). Some staff combine different regional interests (e.g., Latin America and Europe).
Research Centres and Groups
Manchester anthropologists are deeply involved in furthering the research of the School of Social Sciences, and the Faculty of Humanities. They not only participate in initiatives at the University of Manchester, but also founded and continue to lead a number of exciting research centres and institutes whose members are drawn from across the university.
Those groups which are currently directed by anthropologists include the following:
- Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology was founded in 1987 and is directed by Paul Henley. Masterworks of Ethnographic Cinema is a project supported by the Granada Foundation for research conducted by Professor Henley over 24 months between 2008 and 2010 (10,000 GBP).
- Chimera was launched by Sharon Macdonald in collaboration with the Manchester Museum, with initial funding from the Jean Monet Centre for Excellence, CRESC, SoSS and SAHC. The work of Chimera is extended by a grant from the European Science Foundation, Revisiting the Contact Zone: Museums, Theory, Practice - an international conference made to Sharon Macdonald. The conference will convene in July 2011 (40,000 EURO).
- Research Institute for Cosmopolitan Cultures. Nina Glick-Schiller directs this institute founded in 2006 within the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Manchester.
- Centre for Research into Social and Cultural Change. Penny Harvey is a co-Director, leading Theme Four of this ESRC-funded Research Centre at the University of Manchester.
- Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies is a cross-school, interdisciplinary research center that integrates anthropological and arts-based approaches in a series of conferences and public lectures, and has brought such luminaries as Gilroy and Spivak to speak on cultural studies. It is co-directed by Peter Wade
- Global Poverty Research Group is an ESRC-funded group located in the School of Environment and Development, with strong links to anthropology. It is co-directed by Maia Green