Social Anthropology

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People at a street market

Social Anthropology

Understanding humans and their relationships with the world

Within social anthropology, we are concerned with understanding humans and their relationships with the world by engaging with diversity, transformation, and environmental interactions.

We are interested in developments in the study of epistemologies, cognition, temporalities, ethnicity, indigeneity, religion, exchange, conflict, social change, historical consciousness, heritage and geopolitics. We are at the forefront of contemporary debates in identity, social and economic crises, hybrid law, personhood, mobility, migration, landscape, labour, organisations, industry, cultural informatics, political ecology, ethnoecology, ethnobiology, ethnobotany and visual, environmental and medical anthropology. Our research projects span the globe, including the UK and Europe, Central and Southeast Asia, North and Central America, South America the Middle East and Pacific.

Current and recent work is linked to the informal economy, cosmopolitanism, corruption, workplace environments, the economic crisis, precarity, prosperity, ethics, value, morality, skill expertise, symbolic ecology, intercommunal relations, Islamic movements, indigenous urbanisation, human rights, diplomacy, and tourism.

The social anthropology research area is linked to the Centre for Biocultural Diversity (CBCD) as well as the Centre for Ethnographic Research (CER) and Lowland South Americanist European Network.