Dr Nancy Lindisfarne

Nancy Lindisfarne taught anthropology for many years at SOAS, where she now continues as a research associate. 

She is author of Bartered Brides: Politics, Gender and Marriage in an Afghan Tribal Society, Thank God We’re Secular: Gender, Islam and Turkish Republicanism and the short story collection Dancing in Damascus, and co-editor of Dislocating Masculinity and Masculinities under Neoliberalism.  In 2020 she co-authored Afghan Village Voices with Richard Tapper, a rich ethnography of village life in Afghanistan. Why Men? A Human History of Violence and Inequality (with Jonathan Neale, 2024), described by Danny Dorling as ‘a brilliant, funny, unputdownable book for our times’, examines human origins of inequality, patriarchy and violence. 

Nancy has just published, with Richard Tapper, The Piruzai of Afghanistan: A Visual Ethnography (2025), which documents the Piruzai pastoralists of northern Afghanistan, featuring hundreds of photographs and documenting a way of life now transformed by decades of conflict. 

Her work exemplifies the SOAS commitment to anthropology that is regionally grounded, globally significant, and socially engaged.