Anthropology

In this Anthropology Departmental Seminar, Lauren Greenwood (University of Sussex) discusses the complexities of collaboration with the British military, 29 May 2015

In this Fertility and Reproduction Seminar, Raj Rai (Imperial College and St Mary's Hospital) discusses the role of clinical trials and ways of addressing the potential exploitation of vulnerable couples, 26 October 2015

In this Anthropology Departmental Seminar, Alma Gottlieb (Illinois) discusses the blend of religious traditions that have developed on the Cape Verde islands, particularly early Jewish settlers, 6 November 2015

An Anthropology Departmental Seminar presented by Megan Warin (Adelaide) on the ways in which obesity is understood, embodied and enacted, 16 October 2015

An Anthropology Departmental seminar presented by Susana Carvalha (Oxford) on the archaeological sites of non-humans, 27 November 2015

Pregnancy loss and miscarriage in the ancient Near East - a Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group seminar, 30 November 2015 given by Marie-Françoise Besnier (University of Cambridge)

In this Anthropology departmental seminar, Paloma Gay y Blasco (St Andrews) evaluates a twenty-year collaborative project she has undertaken with her Gypsy informer (15 May 2015)

Professor Jeffrey C. Alexander (Yale University) delivered the Mary Douglas Memorial Lecture on 3 June 2014 at Oxford. The lecture was 'The societalization of social problems: recent social crises and the civil sphere' Drawing from cultural sociology, this lecture develops a theory of “societalization” to explain social reaction to three recent, globally significant upheavals – the financial crisis, church pedophilia, and media phone-hacking. While these problems were endemic for years and even decades, they had failed to generate broad crises: Reactions were confined inside institutional boundaries and handled by intra-institutional elites according to the cultural logics of their particular spheres. When intra-institutional strains become interpreted as challenges to civil discourse and interests, there is societalization. Inter-sphere boundaries become tense and there is widespread anguish about social justice and the future of democratic society. A war of the spheres ensues and, eventually, there is movement back to steady state. Societalization cannot prevent the future eruption of social strains. In a differentiated and plural society, tensions between spheres is endemic, and civil repair depends upon the possibilities generated by societalization.

Dimitris Papadopoulos (University of Leicester) discusses different ways to think about technoscience beyond its core institutions (13 March 2015)

Christian Groes-Green (Roskilde University Copenhagen) discusses the nature of being in love and how this is seen and discussed in Mozambique and written about in other African nations (6 March 2015)