News

Based on a conference held in Cambridge to mark Caroline Humphrey’s retirement from the Sigrid Rausing Professorship of Social Anthropology, this volume includes a reprint of Humphrey’s already classic 2008 article, ‘Reassembling Individual Subjects’, which serves as a focus for debate. Responding to decades of 'anti-humanist’ deconstruction of the…

For many years, the department of Social Anthropology has run a series of lectures entitled Schools and Styles of Anthropological Theory, which formed the core of the second-year theory paper. This series, in which members and associates of the department each gave one or two lectures to address theoretical topics of special interest and expertise,…

After Difference: Queer Activism in Italy and Anthropological TheoryQueer activism and anthropology are both fundamentally concerned with the concept of difference.  Yet they are so in fundamentally different ways.  The Italian queer activists in this book value difference as something that must be produced, in opposition to the identity politics t…

Ed Pulford, who completed his PhD in the Department in 2017, has been named as one of the 5 shortlisted candidates for the Bayly Prize, which will be awarded for the first time in 2018.There was a large field of applicants of high quality from 14 U.K. universities, and the shortlist was drawn up by a distinguished international panel of adjudicator…

Professor Dame Marilyn Strathern has been awarded one of this year's International Balzan Prizes, for her contribution to Social Anthropology. The International Balzan Prize Foundation, based in Milan, awards four prizes annually, two in literature, moral sciences and the arts, and two in the physical, mathematical and natural sciences, and medicin…

Professor Joel Robbins, Sigrid Rausing Professor of Social Anthropology and Deputy Head of Department, Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge will be giving a talk on ‘Good and Evil Around the Globe’ as well as debating 'Being Human and Being Good' at the world’s largest philosophy and music festival in London this September. The HowThe…

Every year, the department awards a prize of £200 to the most outstanding IIB dissertation. The prize is named in memory of Dr Sue Benson (1955-2005), an anthropologist who lectured, supervised and directed studies in Cambridge for 26 years and was an inspiration both personally and intellectually for generations of students.We are pleased to annou…

Himalayan connections: melting glaciers, sacred landscapes and mobile technologies in a changing climateA new international interdisciplinary collaboration between the University of Oslo and the University of Cambridge with partners in Nepal and Bhutan explores the hazards experienced by vulnerable communities in high altitude environments as a res…

 We are delighted that the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge has been repeatedly rated top Anthropology department in the world by students and academics. The Department of Social Anthropology at Cambridge has been rated the best in the world for Anthropology in the influential global rankings by the 2024 Guardian Gui…

 Esther Goody (third from the left) with Meyer Fortes (fourth from the right) and other attendees at the 1976 Lomé conference on the African family.It is with the greatest sadness that we learn of the death of our former colleague, Dr Esther Goody, who taught in this department for many years, and will be remembered with great affection by former c…

Professor Harri Englund: Gogo Breeze: Zambia’s Radio Elder and the Voices of Free SpeechA self-styled grandfather on air, Gogo Breeze seeks intimacy over the airwaves and dispenses advice on a wide variety of grievances and transgressions. Multiple voices are broadcast and juxtaposed through call-ins and dialogue, but free speech finds its ally in …

 This year sees the re-uniting of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) as a sub-department of Social Anthropology, opening up exciting new possibilities for collaborative research around the extraordinary collections of the Museum, the communities whose heritage MAA cares for, and questions that speak to the Department’s research themes…

Everyone with an interest in the social sciences remembers the take-home message of Max Weber’s essay, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.  After the Reformation, Weber tells us, some Northern Europeans began working hard to accumulate funds they could invest in starting or expanding businesses that would accumulate even more funds b…

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology is a major new outreach initiative for the department. It is an open-access encyclopaedia that provides people around the globe with information about commonly used anthropological concepts, such as “race and ethnicity”, “migration” and “religion”. You can find the first few entries here: www.anthroencyclo…

New memorial published by the British Academy A new memorial to John Rankine Goody (1919-2015) has been published by the British Academy.                                                                                                                               With thanks to St John's College Cambridge for this photo of Jack Goody