Research at the Department of Anthropology and Sociology

A Mental Health and Psychological Anthropology cluster has consolidated in tandem with our new MA Medical and Psychological Anthropology programme, grant-funded research and widening academic, practitioner and policy-related partnerships, creating a hub for critical cross-cultural mental health research.

Foundational to this cluster is Behrouzan’s collaborative, multi-sited project, Beyond Trauma, making an anthropological contribution to urgent debate on mental healthcare, and Mosse’s project on NHS psychiatric care in London, Transformation in Mental Healthcare: An Anthropological Study of Peer-supported Open Dialogue. Leite has initiated a cross-cultural project on community-based sociality and psychological wellbeing in times of isolation. Gygi will take forward work on Japan’s "hoarding disorder", broadening the "psychological" to human/non-human relations, disposal, Buddhist recycling, animation and animism. 

Simpson’s research is focused on distress as it is generated by racial and gendered inequality, and primarily on embodied experiences of "tension" in Himalayan India. Nolan explores approaches to mental health and wellbeing in China. Modern investigates how people who are judged to be ‘mad’ or ‘slow’ are marginalised within disability politics in Uganda, despite government legislation explicitly including people living with ‘mental impairments’ within the category of ‘people with disabilities.’ 

Our Migration and Diasporas cluster, which developed out of one of the first interdisciplinary MA programmes in Migration and Diaspora Studies in the country, is concerned with issues of transnationality, migration, and diaspora, as well as contemporary border practices in their relation to colonialism and racial capitalism.

Together, this research considers both the global processes and (infra)structures of domination that shape everyday experiences of migration and diaspora, and the resistive and creative practices of individuals and communities in their struggles to move or stay put. Our research responds to urgent policy topics, including housing, homelessness and temporary accommodation, and refugees, displacement and humanitarianism. O’Byrne’s research  investigates issues of mobility, public authority, resistance, and resilience among South Sudanese refugees. Simpson’s new research focuses on health and housing as indices of racial trauma, with particular attention to Birmingham’s African diasporas. Sanders's research explores the spatial techniques and effects of border regimes across urban locations with a current focus on immigration governance in its relation to housing and homelessness, as well as the use of temporary hotel accommodation within the UK asylum system.

Our research supports the cutting-edge work of the Centre for Migration and Diaspora Studies, which hosts visiting researchers, seminar series, film screenings and workshops with grassroots organisations in London.

Our Food and Consumption cluster explores historically and culturally variable foodways in China (Klein), the politics of food systems in South Africa (Hull), and food security in Sudan (Jaspars). An Economic and Social Research Council-funded project will explore the digitalisation of food assistance in India, Sudan, and the UK (Jaspars). The Department has taken Covid-19 as an impetus for adventurous new projects. The SOAS Food Studies Centre supported proposals on community responses to the Covid-19 hunger crisis in South Africa (Hull) and Chinese restaurant resilience during the pandemic (Klein). 

Apostu initiated the Hillingdon Food Stories project, which documents food practices in one of London's largest and most diverse boroughs in partnership with the local council Arts and Heritage division, and which offers opportunity for SOAS students to develop their ethnographic practice. Srivastava’s research spans themes of consumer cultures and the new middle classes in South Asia.

Our Sustainability and Global Futures cluster brings together reframed anthropology of development work (Dolan on corporate sustainability and alternative futures of capitalism in East Africa, Janson on faith-based development in West Africa, and Retsikas on Islamic philanthropism in East Asia), the politics of climate knowledge in South Asia (Simpson, Quasem, Lotter), mining and resource extraction (Noy), water governance (Birkinshaw) and research on consultancy in infrastructure development (Srivastava, Birkinshaw). Modern is currently developing a project on the intersection of labour politics and disability activism among people who acquire permanent impairments while working in industrial agriculture. 

Our Politics and People cluster investigates the relationship between research, policy, and practice. Crewe’s comparative anthropology of parliaments, inaugurated with The House of Commons (2015), led to the Deepening Democracy project , awarding grants to 100s of scholars and artists in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Myanmar; and, with Axelby and Kaur, Ethnographies of Parliaments, Politicians and People, the interlinked global comparative ethnography of six parliaments – Brazil, Ethiopia, Fiji, India, UK and USA; and to a partnership with the South Omo Theatre Company to draw attention to the political marginalisation of the Mursi community – Performing for Peace – through writing, theatre, and film.

Bowles has researched the governmental processes that lead to the assurance of infrastructure in the UK and the political and social consequences of the involvement of private finance in infrastructure provision. He is also investigating the political use of data through developing an ethnographic approach to opinion polling and psephology. Mosse has explored political and legal responses to caste discrimination in India and in UK, where his work on politically contentious issues of caste and equality law, and caste and international development, had impact on public debate and policy.