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PhD, Social Anthropology
University of Cambridge (2002)

Contact:

Tel:  +44 (0)20 7679 8639 
Fax: +44 (0)20 7679 8632
E-mail: m.holbraad@ucl.ac.uk
Room: 139
Office hours: Thursdays 11am-1pm

Publications

 Full list of Publications

SELECTED PAPERS AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD

FURTHER ITEMS AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD



GENERAL INTERESTS

Martin Holbraad's main field research is in Cuba, where he focuses on Afro-Cuban religions and socialist politics.  Having written his doctoral thesis on the role of oracles and money within the diviner cult of Ifà in socialist Cuba, his research since has focused on the relationship between myth and action, the consecration of objects, and, more broadly, the logic of cosmological thought in the field of religion as well as in politics.  These ethnographic interests inform his theoretical concerns with such topics as the anthropology of truth and the imagination, abstraction and divinity, and the relationship between anthropological and philosophical analysis.

CURRENT RESEARCH

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Martin Holbraad’s monograph on the conceptualization of truth in divination and in anthropology, Truth in Motion: The Recursive Anthropology of Cuban Divination, was published by the University of Chicago Press in April 2012. Holbraad is also co-editor of a volume on the role of artefacts in anthropological thinking, called Thinking Through Things: Theorising Artefacts Ethnographically (Routledge, 2007), and a special issue of the journal Ethnos titled Technologies of the Imagination (2009). A number of his peer reviewed articles can be accessed here, and other published items (reviews, polemics, responses etc.) can be accessed here.

He has recently also conducted new ethnographic research on the relationship between socialist ethics and religious morality in Cuba, funded by the British Academy, as well as research with the UK-based physical theatre group Frantic Assembly, exploring the practices of theatrical creativity and its 'reality effects'.

In 2009 he was Visiting Researcher in an inter-disciplinary project with politcal scientists at the Centre for Advanced Security Theory in Copenhagen University, writing on notions of Revolution and sacrifice in socialist political cosmologies.

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TEACHING

Martin Holbraad teaches courses in ethnography and anthropological theory at undergraduate and Master's level, as well as an advanced optional course titled 'Alterity and Experiment in Anthropological Thinking'.  He also convenes the Individual Studies programme for 3rd year undergraduates.

RESEARCH STUDENTS

Martin Holbraad helps run three Reading and Research Groups at UCL: The Cosmology, Religion, Ontology and Culture (CROC) group, which brings together staff and research students who share an ethnographic interest in cosmological thought; the Ethnographies of the Built Environment group, which brings together staff and students from the Department of Anthropology and the Bartlett School of Architecture who share an interest in the intersection between anthropology and architecture; and the Performance, Theatre and Ethnographies of the Imagination group, which brings together staff and research students interested in the anthropology of the performing arts.

He is first supervisor of the following Doctoral students:

Alessandra Basso Ortiz (2006, part-time, Afro-Cuban religion and social improvisation in socialist Cuba, AHRC)
Babis Kontarakis (2007, spirits and divination in Egypt, Greek State Scholarship)
Julia Sauma (2008, maroon cosmologies in Brazil, ESRC)
Belkais Rouached (2008, divination in Iran, Aga Khan studentship)
David Cooper (2010, historicity, land and politics in Nicaragua, ESRC)
Daniel Sherer (2011, ethnographies of the theatrical imagination, ESRC)

He is co-supervisor to:

Viorel Anastasoaie (2006, apprenticeship among Cuban Tobacco farmers, Marie Curie)
Carolina Balthazar (2011, shopping and magic in Britain)

He is second supervisor to:

Oliver Deepwell (2005, cabala symbolism in London, AHRC)
Razvan Dumitru (2006, markets in Moldova, Marie Curie)
Matan Shapiro (2008, kinship and intimacy in Brazil, ORS)
Timothy Carroll (2010, ontologies of fabric in Eastern Orthodox Christianity)
Vita Peacock (2010, ethnography of German academia, AHRC)

Recent Doctoral Students:

Anna Cristina Pertierra ('The struggle for consumption in urban Cuba', awarded 2006)
Diana Espirito Santo (Spiritism in Cuba, awarded 2009)
Sergio Gonzalez Varela (Capoeira Angola in Bahia, awarded 2009)
Marjorie Murrey (Material Culture and the Self in Madrid, awarded 2009)
Damon Dennis (Writing, Numbers and Material Culture in Morocco, awarded 2010)
Piergiorgio di Giminiani (Ancestral Lands, Modern Transactions: Land Restoration among the Mapuche People in Chile, awarded 2011)