RAI - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Lecturer in Linguistic Anthropology, Department of Anthropology, University College London. Interests
Alex Pillen Lecturer in Linguistic Anthropology, Department of Anthropology, University College London. Interests: the anthropological study of rhetoric in war-torn societies, evidentiality, indirect communication, the anthropology of sound. Regions of interest: Kurdish communities in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and London. Languages: Flemish, Kurdish (Kurmanci), Spanish, Sinhala, English, French.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Director ( Administration )
Affiliatipn: received her PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Division of Biomedical Ethics at the Christian-Albrechts- Universität in Kiel, Germany.
Andrea Déri' s research explores the role of local (traditional, indigenous) knowledge in adaptation and resilience to climate change, with a focus on vulnerable low-lying small island communities. She is particularly interested in how academic and non-academic experts can conduct long-term collaborative research, co-produce knowledge and contribute to the understanding of transformative social-ecological changes. Driven by her trans-disciplinary research motivation and inter-disciplinary background that draws on ecology, anthropology and development studies, she has managed a wide range of research and international development projects with several years of experience in India, Indonesia and Japan.
Statement of interest: My work focuses on the everyday practices of resource use and environmental change in the Middle East. My first book was about water politics around the Nile and I am currently working on a book about bread, wheat, and food security in Egypt.
Statement of Interest: Boke's research with United States herbalists and community organizers in New England is situated athwart environmental anthropology, medical anthropology, and political ecology. Boke's work with herbalists focuses on the ways that they construct social relations via attention to bodily wellness with humans, as well as with plants and broader ecologies. She is especially interested in how these cross-species caring relationships emerge in the context of global ecological disruptions. Her scholarly commitments in anthropology are entwined with her work as a social justice activist. Her ongoing work considers on the intersections of climate change, critical race studies, environmental justice, and multispecies studies in the United States. Her dissertation, "Ecological Bodies: North American Practices of Care in a Changing Climate" explores herbalists' efforts to envision new forms of care and the ethics they entail in the context of ecological health and this moment of climate change.
Statement of interest:I am interested in particular in the wetlands and climate change issues; conflicts about environment; thirds landscape; anthropocene; water issues.
Statement of interest: I am an independent environmental anthropologist with partiular interest in maritime communities, participation and representation in natural resource managmement in Southeast Asia, particularly Malaysia.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Finance Committee
- Secretary
Statement of interest: I have worked in Malaysian Borneo since 2003, focusing particularly on religious conversion, ethnic politics, landscape, development, resettlement and indigenous rights. My current research examines the social, political and cultural dimensions of orangutan conservation as a global nexus encompassing a disparate range of players, among them UK-based charities, conservation scientists and small villages in Borneo and Sumatra. Among other things, I am working on a new collaborative project on orangutan killing in rural Borneo, and am interested in exploring further cross-disciplinary/cross-sector opportunities with conservationists and others. I am also available for consultancy work and outreach/public engagement. For further information, please see http://www.brunel.ac.uk/people/liana-chua.
Statement of interest: I am interested in environmental issues and in being part of the list you are preparing.
David Parkin (Chair) Emeritus Professor Social Anthropology, All Souls College and School of Anthropology, Oxford. International Consortium on Language Superdiversity (InCoLaS). Interests: multi-modal semiosis; semantic shift and density; cultural key words; political rhetoric; indexicality; signing; cross-over talk; ontological translanguaging; language evolution and creativity. Regions of interest: eastern Africa; China; European cities. Main Languages: English, Swahili, Luo, Giriama, French, German.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Social Anthropology
David Zeitlyn Professor of Social Anthropology, School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography University of Oxford. Interests: sociolinguistics; indexicality; conversation analysis; language and power; politeness; historical linguistics. Regions of interest: Cameroon, Nigeria. Main Languages: English, Mambila, French.
Job Titles:
- Di Giminiani, Piergiorgio
Job Titles:
- Chairman of Publications Committee
Statement of interest: I have conducted long-term field research in the New Zealand high country on land, culture and identity, with a focus on place attachment, land contestations and sustainability in mountain lands. Fieldwork in Australia focused on alpine cultural heritage in NSW and Victoria. Current research projects in empire and ecology explore cultural and natural heritage conservation and botanical anthropology in the British diaspora with a focus on ecological restoration, the anthropology of plants, and the culture of orchid hybridisation.
Statement of Interest: I am interested in the anthropology of the environment and being included on the list of anthropologists interested in environmental issues
Statement of interest: Georgina Drew, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer (Assistant Professor) of Anthropology and Development Studies at the University of Adelaide in South Australia. Her work has received funding from the Fulbright Hays Program, the National Science Foundation, and Rotary International. She has over 25 articles to her credit that examine human-environment relationships, gendered environmental practices, the impact of religion on the politics of development and environment, and the political ecology of water resource management. These topics have led her to work extensively with social movements contesting unsustainable resource management in various parts of the world. She is also the author of a book published in 2017 by the University of Arizona Press entitled, River Dialogues: Hindu Faith and the Political Ecology of Dams on the Sacred Ganga. Georgina's current and pending research on the cultural politics of urban rainwater harvesting in South Asia is funded by a three-year fellowship from the Australian Research Council (DE160101178). The following is a link to my recently published book: http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/Books/bid2710.htm
Elisabeth Hsu Professor in Anthropology, School of Anthropology, University of Oxford. Interests: linguistic pragmatics, interpretive medical anthropology and semantics; indexicality, phono-aesthetics, physiognomy of language, language and body; histories of language, text critical studies. Fieldwork undertaken in: China, SW China, East Africa. Languages: German, English, French, Chinese (modern and literary); Greek, Latin, (Italian).
Job Titles:
- Forensic Anthropology & Fundraising Officer
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the Finance Committee
Statement of interest: My research spans sustainable agriculture, biotechnology, development, the anthropology of knowledge, and political ecology. Through mixed methods research, I seek to better understand how humans create sustainable environmental relationships within the context of markets, ecology, state interventions, and social networks. I am especially interested in the ways that humans build and use ecological knowledge to inform agricultural decision-making.
Geographical/topical area of interest: I have conducted research in the United States, India, Germany, and Bosnia. I am interested in biotechnology, alternative agriculture, commodity chains, ethnobotany, and ecological knowledge.
Job Titles:
- Office Manager & Conference Assistant
Job Titles:
- Assistant Editor, Anthropological Index Online
Statement of interest: My work on weather looks at how people in the Indian Himalayas dwell in the heat, cold, rain and wind. I have looked at the implications of weather for how people think about illness, how they cope with the cold through physical activity (Jerstad 2016), how they cohabit with domestic animals (buffalo), how they live in wooden and concrete houses with differing thermal properties, how monsoon landslides restrict movement along new roads and how pollution or various substances in the air such as smoke and mist are understood.
Job Titles:
- Secretary
- Member of Publications Committee
Kirsty Rowan Senior Teaching Fellow in Linguistics, Department of Linguistics, School of Oriental and African Studies. Interests: Endangered language and living heritage documentation and revitalisation, language ecologies, language and landscape, ethnophysiography, toponymy, phono-symbolism, writing systems. Regions of interest: Sudan, Egypt, Nubia, Nubian diaspora. Languages: Nile Nubian, Meroitic, Ancient Egyptian, Arabic.
Job Titles:
- Managing Editor, Anthropological Index Online
Job Titles:
- Member of the Research Committee
- Secretary
Job Titles:
- Member of the Research Committee
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the Education Committee
Job Titles:
- Member of the Education Committee
- Secretary
- Education & Communications Officer
Job Titles:
- Film Officer & Festival Director
Job Titles:
- Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University
Theresia Hofer Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Bristol and Research Affiliate at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford. Interests: sign languages and deaf socialities, embodied signifying movement, gesture and "natural" sign, indexicality, language ideologies, linguistic vitality and endangerment, translanguaging in cities. Regions of interest: Tibet and the Himalayas, Japan, Central Europe. Languages: German, English, French, Spanish, Central Tibetan, literary Tibetan, Tibetan Sign Language, basic British & Austrian Sign Language (BSL & OEGS) and Norwegian; Latin.
Emerging out of the RAI Anthropology, Weather and Climate Change conference at the British Museum in May 2016, the Weather Matters hub is a space for vibrant communication among social science scholars (and more broadly) with an interest in weather and climate change. Not a journal, it is somewhere for the currently disparate field to talk about what we are doing, why, how to do it, and for book reviews, conference reviews and photo essays. Rather than streamlining the work that we do, it is a space for debate and also for coordination and awareness among researchers who are extremely diverse in academic affiliation, regional focus and form of engagement with climate change and weather.