UCL Anthropology

The academic year 2013/14 has been hugely busy for staff and students alike. Staff put the finishing touches to the Research Excellence Framework submitted in November and began to discuss the directions which research and teaching will take in the Department over the next seven years.

Department of Anthropology, UCL
Date: 17-18 June 2014
Convenors: Urmila Mohan and Jean-Pierre Warnier

The podcast of the lecture is available now. Listen to the podcast.

Dr Rebecca Empson is to give the Malinowski Memorial Lecture this year at the London School of Economics on Thursday 22 May 2014, 6-7pm. Her lecture is entitled: An Economy of Temporary Possession.

We are pleased to announce that the UCL Graduate Support Scheme is offering 10 bursaries in Anthropology for the academic year 2014-15. Bursaries are available for the following masters programmes:

Volker Sommer, Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at UCL, is one of the main activists behind the initiative to enlarge the "community of equals" and grant basic legal rights to our closest living relatives, bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans.

The Department of Anthropology invites all prospective candidates to the Postgraduate Open Day on Wednesday, 18th June (from 1.30pm onwards).

Michael Stewart (UCL Anthropology and Founding Director of Open City Docs Fest at UCL) will present After Winter Comes Spring (Winter Ade), a film by Helke Misselwitz as part of the UCL Festival of the Arts on 27 May.

Would you like to earn £700+ helping run the ‘People and the Sea’ Global Citizenship Programme, hosted by UCL Anthropology and running for its second year. For more information of the programme go to

We are pleased to announce the first Mary Douglas Memorial Lecture to be held at UCL on Thursday 23 October 2014 at 6pm.

Directions and Connections across Anthropology

Tuesday 24 June 2014, 9.30am-6pm, and evening reception
UCL Anthropology, 14 Taviton Street, London

A maximum of 4 PhD student Mentors required for Graduate Support Scheme Mentor

(for the following programmes: MSc Anthropology, Environment and Development, MA Culture, Materials and Design, MSc Medical Anthropology, MSc Social and Cultural Anthropology)

Congratulations to Gemma Price, Kaya Uzel and Jesse Bia, who won the prizes of this year's Graduate School Competitions.

UCL is one of the world’s leading universities with a tradition of accessibility which dates back to its beginning. It was founded in 1826 to open up education in England for the first time to students of any race, class or religion. It was also the first university to welcome female students on equal terms with men.

A book co-authored by Professor Susanne Kuechler has won the prestigious Art Book Prize for 2013.

Art in Oceania: A New History was published by Thames & Hudson, and co­-authored by anthropologists, art historians and curators of both European and Pacific Islands descent. It covers Oceanic art, past and present, reimagined for the 21st century.

Wonderments of Cosmos Seminar Series - 5-6.30pm on Tuesdays, for 4 weeks, starting 25th February 2014, at Malet Place Engineering Building (next to the Institute of Making), room 1.02. 

The Department of Anthropology, UCL warmly invites you to join your fellow pre-field research students (MRes, MPhil) from UCL, Cambridge and LSE to present and discuss your current research projects.

August 11th – August 15th 2014 (Note date change)
State University of Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil
Call for Participants: Brazilian and International Graduate, Post-Graduate and Post-Docs

Start and End date: September 2014 to September 2018

The Department of Anthropology at UCL has secured funding for 2 PhD Positions for four years for an exciting new ERC-funded project entitled ‘Emerging Subjects of the New Economy: Tracing Economic Growth in Mongolia’.

The Studio of Material Life website has been launched:

http://materialife.com

There has been considerable news recently regarding the department’s ERC funded project The Global Social Media Impact Study (www.gsmis.org) led by Daniel Miller and consisting of nine simultaneous ethnographies scattered around the world - mainly our own post-doctoral and PhD colleagues and students.

Professor Volker Sommer, scientific director of the Gashaka Biodiversity Project, will lead a two-week exploration of montane forests and river headwaters near West Africa's highest peak, the Gangirwal or "Mountain of Death".

UCL Anthropology / 14 Taviton St / WC1H 0BW
13 & 27 February, 6 & 13 March 2014 from 12.00 – 14.00 presented by
UCL Anthropology and DCAL Research Centre

Professor Charles Stewart is to give an inaugural lecture at 6.30pm on Tuesday 28 January 2014, at Wilkins Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre, 2nd Floor, South Junction, Wilkins Building, UCL, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT.

The proceedings of the roundtable discussion on ‘The Politics of Ontology’, co-organised by Martin Holbraad at the recent annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) at Chicago, are now available at the on-line forum on Theorizing the Contemporary, which is run by the journal Cultural Anthropology.

Apply now for this new AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) studentships covering the full costs of a degree programme in Anthropology leading to the award of MPhil/PhD.