Senior Seminar

How Plague Got Rats Professor Christos Lynteris (University of St Andrews) This seminar examines the ways in which plague became associated with rats in modern epidemiology. The seminar will discuss the transformations of the rat in epidemiological reasoning during the third plague pandemic (1894-1959). I will show how...

Film - Americaville (2020) with Adam Smith (University of Cambridge) Hidden among mountains – seemingly far from the crowds, pollution and bureaucracy of Beijing - a Wild West-themed gated community promises to provide an American utopia of freedom, happiness, and prosperity to its several thousand Chinese residents. In...

Development on credit: For-profit development imaginaries and the financialisation of philanthropy in Brazil Dr Jessica Sklair (University of Cambridge) The financialisation of the global economy has seen a shift away from productive capacity towards financial speculation as the driver of wealth accumulation. In recent...

Ambivalent generosity among local patrons: Ethnic exclusion and place belonging in a lower income neighborhood of Tel Aviv Linking anthropological exchange theory to ethnic and racial studies in the urban sphere, this paper contributes to the study of place belonging in the context of ethnic and racial discrimination...

Renouncing the World: An Ascetic Life and the Rise of Hindu Nationalism in India Professor Sondra Hausner (University of Oxford) In a frighteningly short period of time, the ideal of a Hindu nation has recently become the dominant political ideology of India, in stark contrast to the country that has been a fiercely proud...

The Sesame, the Drought, and the Index: Sensing Agrarian Environments Through Weather Insurance Dr Caroline Schuster School of Archaeology and Anthropology (Australian National University) Based in the agrarian worlds of commercial sesame farming in northern Paraguay where insurance companies are now selling weather...

“Only the orangutans get a life jacket”: Uncommoning responsibility in a global conservation nexus Liana Chua (Cambridge), Hannah Fair (Oxford), Viola Schreer (Brunel), Anna Stępień (Brunel) and Paul Hasan Thung (Brunel) Dr Liana Chua (University of Cambridge) In an era of mass extinction, who gets a life jacket, who is...

A common world: China’s psy- training frenzy from a first-person perspective Professor Kuan (The Chinese University of Hong Kong) In 2017, a WeChat account for psychology enthusiasts posted a series of comics poking fun at the grumbles of therapists in China, taking the format of a call-and-response. Therapy is too...

Senior Research Seminar with Dr Anna-Riikka Kauppinen (University of Cambridge) God’s Deposits: Circulation of Cash and Charisma in Ghana’s Retail Banking When nine Ghanaian banks collapsed during the country’s 2017-2019 financial crisis, a popular Charismatic Pentecostal pastor was at the centre of public debate as the...

Senior Research Seminar with Dr Michael Edwards (University of Cambridge) Real Change: Converting Politics in Burma/Myanmar “Real change”: This was the National League for Democracyʼs offer to voters in Myanmarʼs 2015 general election, the first since the apparent end of military rule. A vote for the party was a vote for a...