News

Showcase your Fieldwork PhotographsPostgraduates in Social Anthropology are invited to enter this year’s Postgraduate Photographic Competition to have their work displayed in the Department and on the Department’s website and to have the chance to win a Heffers book voucher (First Prize £75, Second Prize £50 and Third Prize £25).   Photos will be j…

Both sociocultural anthropology and theology have made fundamental contributions to our understanding of human experience and the place of humanity in the world. But can these two disciplines, despite the radical differences that separate them, work together to transform their thinking on these topics? This book argues that they can. To make this p…

We are pleased that Cambridge has again been ranked the top anthropology department in the world in the influential rankings carried out annually by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS World University Rankings).https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2022/anthropology#top_menu

The Department of Social Anthropology is delighted to announce that four Gates Cambridge Scholars will start postgraduate courses with us in Michaelmas 2022.  Zoljargal Enkh-Amgalan (Mongolia) will be joining the MPhil in Social Anthropological Research course. Ila Ananya (India), Alaa Hajyahia (Israel, Palestine), and Adaiah Hudgins-Lopez (United …

We are devastated to receive the news that the visual anthropologist and documentary filmmaker Mantas Kvedaravicius, a former PhD student of our Department, was killed by the Russian invading forces in Mariupol, Ukraine. We will be holding a memorial event in Cambridge (with hybrid online participation) to honour Mantas and his work, with a viewing…

The Department are delighted to announce that Dr Ori Mautner has been awarded the Royal Anthropological Institute's Curl Essay Prize 2021 for his essay The Self in Self-Formation: Embodiment, Religious Mediation, and the Subject’s Interrelated Parts among Orthodox-Jewish Meditators.

Current campaigns for racial equality implore White people to learn from racialized others. Professor Harri Englund’s new book Visions for Racial Equality: David Clement Scott and the Struggle for Justice in Nineteenth-Century Malawi(Cambridge University Press) presents a little-known historical case of listening and learning in a racialized encoun…

MIASU is pleased to announce the publication of an edited volume co-ordinated from MIASU and edited by Riam Kuyakanon, Hildegard Diemberger and David Sneath – ‘Cosmopolitical Ecologies Across Asia: Places and Practices of Power in Changing Environments.'This book, published by Routledge, highlights the case for cosmopolitical ecologies as a new and…

Vietnamese State Honour Awarded to Professor Susan BaylyProfessor Susan Bayly, Professor (Emerita) of Historical Anthropology, has been awarded a prestigious State Honour by the Government of Vietnam. The 'For the Cause of Culture’ medal has been awarded in recognition of Professor Bayly's services to leading Vietnamese cultural institutions, inclu…

Evans Fellowships 2022The Advisory Committee for the Evans Fund give notice that they intend to proceed to an election of an Evans Fellow or Fellows early in the Easter Term 2022.  A graduate of any university is eligible to apply, provided that they intend to engage in research in anthropology or archaeology in relation to Southeast Asia.  The Adv…

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology (CEA) has had a highly successful fourth year. It has continued to publish peer-reviewed, open-access introductions to basic concepts of anthropology. All of its entries can be found here: www.anthroencyclopedia.com. Over the past year, CEA entries have attracted more than 174 000 readers, pushing the tota…

The new MPhil in Social Anthropological Research has got off to a strong start, with an inaugural batch of 11 students joining the Department in October. This 9-month degree has two key aims. First, it gives students with an Anthropology background the chance to develop their research specialisms with guidance from senior anthropologists. Second, i…

Crises beg(et) creativity. A readiness to navigate change and constraint undergirds the descriptive enterprise of anthropology — beginning, perhaps, with Malinowski’s ethnographic research on the Trobriand Islands during World War I, and characteristic of the discipline even now. Having conducted fieldwork during the COVID-19 pandemic, we offer som…

This term, we welcome to the Department Dr Iza Kavedžija, a social and medical anthropologist specialising in Japan.  Iza's primary research interests span health and wellbeing, ageing and the life course, and art and creativity. Dr Kavedžija’s research  explores the lived experience of ageing in urban Japan, and the ways in which older people cons…

In September, Dr Liana Chua began her appointment as the first Tunku Abdul Rahman University Assistant Professor in Malay World Studies, an entirely new position that is fully funded by St Catharine’s College and based at the Department of Social Anthropology. Following her formal admission as a Fellow of St Catharine’s, Dr Chua is also serving as …