Anthropology
The Oxford Anthropology Podcast features talks by internationally renowned scholars and cutting edge researchers from the University of Oxford. Their lectures explore a wide range of human experience and include case studies from around the world. The podcast is produced by the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography.
Episodes
The Moral Economy of Infrastructures in Everest Tourism
As social media posts from the slopes of Mount Everest become almost commonplace Dr Jolynna Sinanan (University of Manchester) focuses on digital media use amongst guides and porters and the impact of digital infrastructures in the area.
Pentecostalism, Deliverance and Queer Sexuality in Nigeria: Literary Representations
Professor Adriaan van Klinken takes us to the epicentre of Pentecostalism. Through the emerging body of queer Nigerian literature, Professor Adriaan van Klinken (University of Leeds) looks at the motif of the deliverance ritual in a lecture that spans anthropological, gender and sexuality, literary and religious studies.
Stepping in, helping out, competing with…? State and civic actors in Ukraine’s wartime heritage work
Dr. Vonnak reflects on how socio historical events impact the definition, preservation, and sometimes neglect of cultural heritage. She draws from her extensive field work in Ukraine over the past eight years. Edited and hosted by Dora Duo.
Parasites, Invention, and Grace: Taking Turns in a Streetcorner Bureaucracy
Michael Degani analyzes the styles of work and conflict amongst electrical contractors who congregate across the street from a power utility office in urban Tanzania. Michael Degani (University of Cambridge) explores the balance of entrepreneurial hustle and bureaucratic order their long-running streetcorner bureau strikes.
Edited and hosted by Peyton Cherry
This was a departmental seminar at
Anthropology, Philosophy and Symmetrisation
Philippe Descola, one of Anthropology's most influential figures, invites us to go beyond the traditional boundaries of nature and culture and redefine our understanding of humanity's relationship with the world around us. Philippe Descola (Emeritus professor, Collège de France, Paris)
Edited and hosted by Luise Eder
This was a departmental seminar at the School of Anthropology and Museum Eth
Intimate Rites: Ancestors and Queer Kinship in Zimbabwe
Raffaela Taylor-Seymourn examines the engagements with ancestral spirits among young queer Zimbabweans Raffaela Taylor-Seymourn (Pembroke College, University of Oxford) focuses on the form of kinship that young queer people forge with ancestral spirits and how they often contrast to relationships with living family members.
Edited and hosted by Peyton Cherry
This was a departmental seminar at
Nutritional Anthropology
Stanley Ulijaszek discusses human dietary evolution, dietary flexibility and present day undernutrition and infection Stanley Ulijaszek Emeritus Professor University of Oxford demonstrates the multidisciplinary nature of nutritional anthropology to confront major issues that are changing human relationships with disease.
Edited and hosted by Jacob Evans
This was a departmental seminar at the S
How to Stitch Ethnography
Feminist anthropologist Tania Perez-Bustos discusses how immersion in the act of embroidery affects the body and enables collective reflection and listening. Tania Perez-Bustos (Universidad Nacional de Colombia) explores how the process of learning transforms an object to study ethnographically into an artifact with which to ask new ethnographic questions.
Edited and hosted by Malin Schlode
The Rise and Fall of Generations
Does life take you any nearer to your ancestors or does it draw you ever further away from them? Tim Ingold discusses his new work ‘The Rise and Fall of Generation Now’ in which he reverses the perspectives on generations of social life by seeing not as linear but as a process.
Edited and hosted by Luise Eder
This was a departmental seminar at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography
Living in Tide: The Climate of the Urban Sea
How do fishers and scientists read the uncertain terrain of the city in the sea? What stories does the urban sea hold for the futures of the city? Nikhil Anand (University of Pennsylvania) discusses his new work and reflects on the uncertain futures of coastal cities in an era of climate change.
Edited and hosted by Lan Duo.
This was a departmental seminar at the School of Anthropology and M
Crude Sonics: Field Recordings from an Extractive Zone
Zsuzsanna Ihar leads us through field recordings captured in the marginal settlements of Baku, capital of Azerbaijan. She traces sounds that haunt, interrupt, and resist processes of gentrification, displacement, and capitalist profiteering. Edited and hosted by Eben Kirksey.
This was a departmental seminar at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography in the 2022-23 academic year. The r
China in the global reproduction migration order
Peidong Yang (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) presented this seminar as part of the COMPAS/Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group seminar series on 14 January 2019
Food insecurity of fatness: from evolutionary ecology to social science
This Evolutionary Medicine and Public Health seminar was presented by Professor Daniel Nettle (Newcastle University) on 16 January 2019
Intimate geopolitics: migration, marriage of citizenship across Chinese borders
This COMPAS/Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group seminar was presented by Elena Barabantseva (University of Manchester) on 21 January 2019
The dual burden of malnutrition and the obstetric dilemma
Professor Jonathan Wells (University College London) delivered this seminar as part of the Evolutionary Medicine and Public Health series on 23 January 2019
Grandparenting migration: reproduction, care circulations and care ethics across borders
Elaine Ho (National University of Singapore) delivered this seminar as part of the COMPAS/Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group series on 28 January 2019
Investment migration and social reproduction: the case of recent patterns of migration from China
Professor Gracia Liu-Farrer (Waseda University, Tokyo) delivered this seminar as part of the COMPAS/Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group series on 4 February 2019
Iron, infection and anaemia: evolutionary viewpoint on a huge global health problem
Hal Drakesmith (Radcliffe Department of Medicine, Oxford) delivered this seminar as part of the Evolutionary Medicine and Public Health series on 6 February 2019
Birth tourism from China and Taiwan to the United States: cosmopolitan strategies and aspirations
Sean Wang (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin) delivered this seminar as part of the COMPAS/Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group series on 11 February 2019
Stunting does not equal malnutrition: evolutionary perspective on human height variation applied to public health
An Evolutionary Medicine and Public Health seminar delivered by Professor Barry Bogin (Loughborough University) on 13 February 2019
Assisted reproductive technologies and medical travel
A COMPAS/Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group seminar delivered by Professor Andrea Whittaker (Monash University) on 18 February 2019
Childbearing as global security strategies
Professor Pei-Chia Lan (National Taiwan University) delivered this COMPAS/Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group seminar on 25 February 2019
Educational migration: youth, time and transformation
Professor Francis Collins (University of Waikato) delivered this COMPAS/Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group seminar on 4 March 2019
The Science of Modelling Through
Professor Dan Sarewitz delivered this seminar at the Institute for Science Innovation and Society on 4 March 2019
Is female health cyclical? Evolutionary perspectives on menstruation
Alex Alvergne (Oxford) delivered this seminar on 6 March 2019 as part of the Primate Conversations seminar series
Global householding: care migration and the question of gender inequality
A presentation by Professor Brenda Yeoh (National University of Singapore) for the COMPAS/Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group seminar (11 March 2019)
How war is shaping the Ukrainian HIV epidemic: A phylogeographic analysis
An Evolutionary Medicine and Public Health seminar presented by Tetyana Vasylyeva (Department of Zoology, University of Oxford) on 24 October 2018
Why are men muscular? Reproductive, hormonal, and ecological hypotheses to explain variation in human male muscularity within populations of Bangladeshi and British men
An Evolutionary Medicine and Public Health seminar presented by Kesson Magid (Department of Anthropology, University of Durham) on 7 November 2018
Life history, parental investment and health of Agta foragers
An Evolutionary Medicine and Public Health seminar presented by Abigail Page (Department of Anthropology, University College London) on 14 November 2018
Telomeres as integrative markers of exposure to stress and adversity: A systematic review and meta-analysis
An Evolutionary Medicine and Public Health seminar presented by Dr Gillian Pepper (Centre for Behaviour and Evolution, University of Newcastle) on 28 November 2018
Militant masks: youth and insecurity in the Niger Delta
David Pratten, the University of Oxford, presented the Anthropology Departmental Seminar on 9 November 2018
Trials of the everyday: spaces of global health in South Africa
Michelle Pentecosts, King's College London, presented the Anthropology Departmental Seminar on 2 November 2018
Precolonial Microbiome: how microbiologists access anthropology museums to contribute to the debate on restitution
Frederick Keck, Musée du quai Branly, presented this Anthropology Departmental Seminar on 26 October 2018
'Don't Bury the Famine Dead': how humanitarian intervention killed the most vulnerable in Ajiep, South Sudan, in 1998
This Anthropology Departmental Seminar was given by Jok Madut Jok, SUNY Upstate Medical University, on 23 November 2018
Social life of a license: caste and everyday struggles for work legitimacies in India
This Anthropology Departmental Seminar was given by Bhawani Buswala, University of Oxford, on 30 November 2018.
Studying the origins of human material culture in young chilldren
This Anthropology Departmental Seminar was delivered by Dr Eva Reindl (University of Oxford) on 2 February 2018
The grey area: fascism between the general and the particular
This Anthropology Departmental Seminar was delivered by Dr Paolo Heywood (University of Cambridge) on 25 May 2018
Why Are There Always Candomblés? Situated Knowledges of Miscegenation and Syncretism in Brazil
This Anthropology Departmental Seminar was delivered by Professor Marcio Goldman (National Museum, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) on 11 May 2018
Rights and justice: reproductive politics and legal activism in India
This Anthropology departmental Seminar was delivered by Professor Maya Unnithan (University of Sussex) on 26 January 2018
A petition to kill: efficacious appeals against big cats in India
Nayanika Mathur (Oxford) delivered this Anthropology Departmental Seminar on 5 May 2018
The seven moral rules found all around the world
This Anthropology Departmental Seminar was delivered by Oliver Scott Curry (Oxford) on 18 May 2018
The Marett Memorial Lecture 2018. Individualism in the Wild: Oneness in Jivaroan Culture
The Marett Memorial Lecture for 2018 (27 April) was given by Professor Anne-Christine Taylor (emeritus; Director of Research at the CNRS) on the Amazonian 'Individualism' of the Jivaroan people of Ecuador and Peru
The promise of the (foreign) image: post-post-internet art from the Philippines (and other notes from the field)
An Anthropology Departmental Seminar delivered by Rafael Schacter (University College London) on 1 December 2017
The concept of culture in cultural evolution
The Keynote speech by Tim Lewens (Professor of Philosophy of Science, Cambridge) for the Cultural Evolution Workshop held at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, on 28 February 2017
Sustaining one another: enset, animals, and people in the southern highlands of Ethiopia
An Anthropology Departmental Seminar delivered by Elizabeth Ewart and Wolde Tadesse (School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, Oxford) on 13 October 2017
Existential mobility, migrant imaginaries and multiple selves
An Anthropology Departmental Seminar by Michael Jackson (Emeritus Professor of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School), 20 October 2017
Words and Deeds - the Astor Visiting Lecture 19 October 2017
Michael Jackson, Distinguished Visiting Professor of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School, delivered the Astor Visiting Lecture at Oxford on 19 October 2017. Introduced by Ramon Sarró (Oxford). Abstract: 'In this talk, I share some vignettes from my recent fieldwork among African migrants living in Copenhagen, Amsterdam and London in order to reflect on the cultural and strategic reasons why
Ebola: A biosocial journey
The inaugural Geoffrey Harrison Prize Lecture delivered in Oxford on 3 November 2017 by Melissa Parker, Professor of Medical Anthropology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Possible Futures - Robert Foley
A talk by Robert Foley (University of Cambridge) for Possible Futures, an event held at the Oxford University Natural History Museum on 3 November 2016 that celebrated the relaunch of Biological Anthropology at the University of Oxford.
Possible Futures - Rebecca Sear
A talk by Rebecca Sear (Dept. of Population Health) for Possible Futures, an event held at the Oxford University Natural History Museum on 3 November 2016 that celebrated the relaunch of Biological Anthropology at the University of Oxford.
Possible Futures - Peter Walsh
A talk by Peter Walsh (University of Cambridge) for Possible Futures, an event held at the Oxford University Natural History Museum on 3 November 2016 that celebrated the relaunch of Biological Anthropology at the University of Oxford.
Possible Futures - Charlotte Roberts
A talk by Charlotte Roberts (University of Durham) for Possible Futures, an event held at the Oxford University Natural History Museum on 3 November 2016 that celebrated the relaunch of Biological Anthropology at the University of Oxford.
Possible Futures
Alexandra Alvergne and Nicholas Márquez-Grant introduce Possible Futures, an event held at the Oxford University Natural History Museum on 3 November 2016 that celebrated the relaunch of Biological Anthropology at the University of Oxford.
Ebola Emergence is Predictable
This talk was given by Dr Peter Walsh (University of Cambridge) at the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine on 3 November 2016/
A War on People: The Drug War and the Hermeneutic Politics of Those who Resist it
This Anthropology Departmental Seminar was given by Jarrett Zigon (University of Virginia) on 2 December 2016.
The Indian Village: Marx to Modi
In this Anthropology Departmental Seminar, Ed Simpson (SOAS) discusses the issues raised by the re-study of an Indian village. 25 November 2016.
The Artist and the Stone: Ethnography of an Artistic Process
This Anthropology Departmental Seminar was given by Roger Sansi-Roca (Goldsmiths, University of London) on 18 November 2016.
A Brilliant Jewel: Celibacy and its Malcontents in the Brazilian Catholic Church
In this Departmental Seminar, Maya Mayblin (University of Edinburgh) discusses the relatively late and most challenged rule in the Brazilian Catholic Church - celibacy. 4 November 2016.
Formalization as Development: Accounting for the Proliferation of Village Savings Associations
In this Anthropology Departmental Seminar, Maia Green (University of Manchester) discusses village savings associations and small-scale credit in Sub-Saharan Africa. 28 October 2016.
‘I Can Feel the Mafia but I Can’t See it’: Investigatory Dilemma in Present-day Trapani
The opening Evans-Pritchard Lecture for 2017 given by Dr Naor Ben-Yehoyada (Columbia University) on 1 May. The theme of the series was: 'Getting Cosa Nostra: Knowledge and Criminal Justice in Southwestern Sicily'.
Gifts, entitlements, benefits and surplus: interrogating food poverty and food aid in the UK
The 2017 Mary Douglas Memorial Lecture was given in Oxford on 24 May by Prof. Pat Caplan of Goldsmiths, London.
The concept of culture in cultural evolution
In his keynote speech for the Cultural Evolution Workshop (held in the Pitt Rivers Museum on 28 February 2017), Prof. Tim Lewens of Cambridge examines the concept of culture in cultural evolution.
Why do children doubt magic, but believe in the miraculous?
Prof. Paul Harris (Harvard Graduate School of Education) examines why children are skeptical about magical phenomena but are willing to believe in supposedly miraculous violations of everyday causal constraints. 12 May 2017.
Transformation through Ritual: Bodies as Sacred Space
A seminar of the Anthropology Research Group at Oxford on Eastern Medicines and Religions. Dr Ann R. David (University of Roehampton) focuses on Tamil worshippers in the UK to discuss the role of ritual in religion and dance. 18 January 2017.
Climate, weather, culture
In this Departmental Seminar, Prof. Steve Rayner examines the blossoming of anthropological attention to climate change over the last ten years. 17 February 2017.
The great migration of summer 2015: trajectories, journeys and hubs
In this Departmental Seminar, Dr Franck Düvell (COMPAS) focuses on the great migration of 2015 when it is estimated that 12 million people were newly displaced. 20 January 2017.
Exhibiting violence and social change in Brazil
Prof. Elizabeth B. Silva (The Open University) discusses the role of staged events in remembering the establishment of dictatorship in Brazil in 1964. 19 May 2017.
Women in India’s waste economy
In this Departmental Seminar, Prof. Barbara Harriss-Whiten draws on anthropology, economics and politics to examine the role of women in Indian society. 12 May 2017.
The Gorongosa Restoration Project, Mozambique
Greg Carr, the President of the Gorongosa Restoration Project in Mozambique, gives an overview of how the Gorongosa National Park has evolved since Mozambique's civil conflict ended in 1992. 5 May 2017.
Exploring the city's 'sutures'
Filip De Boeck (KU Leiden) explores 'urban life between want and wish', drawing on examples from the DRCongo (4 March 2016)
Plantain island sirens
Jennifer Diggins (Oxford Brookes) discusses 'tales of poverty, fish, and seduction from maritime Sierra Leone' (26 February 2016)
Science, stories and indigenous wisdom: is the wider world waking up at last?
Joy Hendry (Oxford Brookes) examines indigenous knowledge and specific projects across the world, including Canada, Australia and New Zealand (13 May 2016)
The charm of 'things': ethnography and performance
Marta Rosa Jardim (UNIFESP, Brazil) examines the role of sculptures of Hindu gods in Mozambique and the influence of art history on her anthropological research (20 May 2016)
The certainty of futures lost
Lucy Lowe (Edinburgh) discusses motherhood, Caesarean sections and migration in 'Little Mogadishu', Mairobi (3 Fecember 2015)
The fragility of conviction
Mathijs Pelkmans (LSE)'s seminar is based on 'walking with the Tablighi Jammat in Kyrgyzstan (12 February 2016)
Profane relations: the irony of offensive jokes in India
Andrew Sanchez (Kent) discusses why a multi-ethnic workforce in eastern India exchanges jokes about each other's religion and cultures as a form of irony (19 February 2016)
The developmental origins of health and disease: adaptation reconsidered
Ian Rickard (Durham) places the origins of the science of health and disease within a framework of evolutionary theory and a medical anthropology perspective (18 January 2016)
Obstructed labour: the classic obstetric dilemma and beyond
Emma Pomeroy (Cambridge) places obstructed labour within an evolutionary perspective. A medical anthropology seminar given on 15 February 2016.
Inflammaging and its role in ageing and age-related diseases
Cristina Giuliani (Bologna) places inflammaging, and genetics, within an evolutionary perspective. A medical anthropology seminar given on 1 February 2016.
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome
Charlotte K. Russell (Parent-Infant Sleep Lab, Durham) looks at how evolutionary anthropology and cross-cultural perspectives can have a huge impact on specific healthcare issues such as SIDS (22 February 2016)
