SOAS University of London

Department of Anthropology and Sociology

Anthropology Department Staff

Head of Department
Director of Learning & Teaching
Director of Research
Director of Student Support & Experience
Director of Doctoral Studies; MPhil/PhD Admissions Tutor
MA Tutor; MA Admissions Tutor
Postgraduate Programme Covenors/Contacts
BA Social Anthropology (single & joint hons.)
Departmental Administrative Team

Academic Staff

Professor Edward Simpson
Head of Department
Professor of Social Anthropology
Edward Simpson
Ethnography of western India; social theory and the Indian Ocean; disaster and reconstruction anthropology; post-colonial rural change; infrastructure development in South Asia
  • Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4481
  • Email: es7@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: B400
  • Academic Support Hours: By appointment
Dr Lori Allen
Reader in Anthropology
Lori Allen

Palestine and the Middle East; human rights; nationalism; the United Nations; investigative commissions; political epistemologies; international law;  anthropology of violence; political anthropology; historical anthropology

  • Tel: 020 7898 4491
  • Email: la22@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 588
  • On Sabbatical:2021/22 & 2022/23
Dr Orkideh Behrouzan
Senior Lecturer in Anthropology
Departmental Director of Doctoral School
Behrouzan Orkideh -ob8 -ANT

medical anthropology; anthropology of medicine, psychiatry, science, and technology; STS; mental health, trauma, social ruptures, memory, and subjectivity; refugees and displacement; Iran; the Middle East; epidemics and pandemics; COVID19; HIV/AIDS

  • Tel: 4695
  • Email: ob8@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 589
  • Academic Support Hours: Please see bio for details
Dr Benjamin Bowles
Lecturer in Anthropology
ANT -IMG - BEN BOWLES

Political and economic anthropology, resilience and sustainability, uncertainty; infrastructure- governance, finance, sustainability; alternative lifestyles and sustainable forms of dwelling; narrowboat travelling communities (Boaters); Britain.

  • Email: bb37@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 569
  • Academic Support Hours: Wednesdays 4.00-6.00pm, please see bio for details
Professor Andrea Cornwall
Professor of Global Development and Anthropology
Pro-Director (Research & Enterprise), SOAS
Andrea Cornwall

West Africa and India; anthropology of the state & institutions, bureaucracy, social movements, citizen participation; health systems and accountability; gender and sexualities; domestic and sex workers' rights movements; sexual and reproductive rights and health.

Professor Emma Crewe
Professor of Social Anthropology; Director, GRNPP
Emma Crewe
Anthropology of organisations (especially parliaments and other legislatures); politicians and people in democracies; international development; relationship between research, policy and practice; UK, South Asia and Ethiopia.
Professor Catherine Dolan
Professor of Anthropology
Catherine Dolan

East Africa. Corporations and capitalism, international development, moral economies, corporate social responsibility, enterprise and entrepreneurialism, inclusive markets, consumption and commodities, politics and practices of food governance, gender.

  • Tel: 020 7898 4425
  • Email: cd17@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 567
  • Academic Support Hours: Campus: Wed 12-1pm |Online: Thu 3-5pm (link below)
Dr Fabio Gygi
Lecturer in Anthropology
Fabio Gygi

Japanese society, material culture, medical anthropology, science and technology studies, cultural history

  • Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4417
  • Email: fg5@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 562
  • Academic Support Hours: Tuesdays 4-6pm, see details in bio
Dr Elizabeth Hull
Senior Lecturer in Anthropology
Elizabeth Hull

South Africa; economic anthropology; anthropology of the state & institutions, bureaucracy, agriculture; livelihoods; health; nutrition; politics of food systems, food acquisition and consumption practices.

  • Tel: 020 7898 4766
  • Email: eh17@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 551
  • Academic Support Hours: By appointment
Professor Marloes Janson
Professor of West African Anthropology
Associate Director of Research (Research Ethics & Researcher Development), SOAS
Marloes Janson

Anthropology of religion, religious reform (Islam and Pentecostalism), transnational religious networks (Tabligh Jamaʻat), faith-based development, urban anthropology, popular culture, gender, youth, West Africa (the Gambia, Senegal and Nigeria)

  • Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4345
  • Email: mj19@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 580
  • Academic Support Hours: Wednesdays 10am-12pm, see bio for details
Dr Jakob Klein
Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology
MA Tutor
Jakob Klein
China (South); anthropology of food; regional cuisines; local foods; restaurant cultures; urban Chinese society and the urban/rural divide.
  • Tel: 020 7898 4428
  • Email: jk2@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 564
  • Academic Support Hours: See bio for details
Dr Naomi Leite
Reader in Anthropology
Departmental Director of Learning and Teaching; BA Programme Convenor
Image of Naomi Leite

Sociality, belonging, and exclusion across cultural domains and scales; identity and identification; cultural logics of kinship, relatedness, heritage, and obligation; transcultural encounter and (mis)communication (esp in tourism/travel); community, self, and wellbeing; social inequality; language and thought; psychological anthropology, person-centred ethnography, ethnographic theory & practice. 

  • Tel: +44(0) 20 7898 4407
  • Email: nl15@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 591
  • Academic Support Hours: T10-12 (Zoom). See bio for details
Professor David Mosse
Professor of Social Anthropology
David Mosse
Anthropology of mental health and psychiatry; anthropology of organisations and activism, international development, caste, Dalit rights, anthropology of Christianity, South Asian society and popular religion, environmental history and natural resources management.
  • Tel: 020 7898 4426
  • Email: dm21@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 573
  • Academic Support Hours: See bio for details
Dr Kostas Retsikas
Reader in Social Anthropology
Kostas Retsikas
The anthropology of personhood, social theory and poststructuralism, religion (especially Islam), the anthropology of the gift and of Islamic economics, Indonesia and South East Asia.
  • Tel: 020 7898 4432
  • Email: kr1@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 552
  • Academic Support Hours: See bio for details
  • On Sabbatical:Term 3 sabbatical
Professor Ruba Salih
Professor in Gender Studies
Ruba Salih

Gender, Islam and modernity in the Middle East and Europe; Islamic feminism, secular and religious women’s movements in the Middle East, transnational migration and gender; multiculturalism and citizenship; Islam in Europe, globalization; disapora and refugee studies; the Palestine question.

Dr Charlotte Sanders
Lecturer in Anthropology
Image of Charlotte Sanders

Migration and diaspora; feminist theory (particularly Black and decolonial); critical race theory; feminist/socialist/anarchist geographies; everyday politics; housing and homelessness; community grounded research; Sudanese in the UK.

Dr Mina Sol
Lecturer in Anthropology
Departmental Director of Student Support and Experience
Staff Silhouette

Contemporary anthropological theory; critical social theory; philosophical anthropology; creative ethnographic methods (esp. literary and visual tools); gender and body politics; queer diasporas; queer pieties; racialised religions; neo-spiritual movements and subjectivities; politics of memory and secrecy

Dr Inna Yaneva-Toraman
Lecturer in Anthropology
Inna Yaneva-Toraman

Political economy; land and landownership; politics of identity; indigenous rights; rural livelihoods and agrarian change; sustainable development; sustainable farming; food and kinship; agroecology and conservation management; Oceania, Papua New Guinea

  • Email: iy6@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 551
  • Academic Support Hours: See bio for details

Global Research Network on Parliaments and People

Professor Emma Crewe
Professor of Social Anthropology; Director, GRNPP
Emma Crewe
Anthropology of organisations (especially parliaments and other legislatures); politicians and people in democracies; international development; relationship between research, policy and practice; UK, South Asia and Ethiopia.
Dr Jas Kaur
Postdoctoral Researcher
Jas Kaur

Conflict and conviviality, belonging and exclusion, indigenous and immigrant narratives of statehood in post-colonial, multi-ethnic spaces. Anthropology of coups. Ethnography of Parliament. Fiji (also Myanmar and Ethiopia).

Professorial Research Associates

Professor Kathleen M Adams
Professorial Research Associate
Kathleen Adams

Anthropology of tourism, heritage and the politics of identity, globalization, museum studies, anthropology of art; Indonesia and South East Asia. 

Professor Tom Selwyn
Professorial Research Associate
Tom Selwyn

Anthropology of tourism, pilgrimage, cultural heritage; the Mediterranean, in particular Palestine/Israel. 

Research Associates

Dr Mukta Das
Research Associate
Mukta Das

Anthropology of food; notions of food, belonging and identity; food histories and cultures of Asia; influence of minority food cultures on ordinary food of majority groups; South Asian food communities and networks in China's Pearl River Delta.

Dr Zoë Goodman
Research Associate
ANT - IMG - Zoe Goodman

Urban anthropology; anthropology of insecurity; architecture; Islamic reform; blood donation; memory especially nostalgia; Indian Ocean; South Asian diasporas in East Africa.

Dr Sushrut Jadhav
Research Associate
Staff Silhouette

Britain, South Asia; cultural dimensions of mental health across nations, suffering, marginalised populations in psychiatric care in London and Chennai, cultural identity of Dalit groups (formerly 'untouchable' caste) in India. Senior Clinical Lecturer, Research Department of Health Sciences, UCL.

Dr Kevin Latham
Research Associate
Kevin Latham
China: Hong Kong and Guangdong Province (PRC) Chinese media, newspapers, television, journalism, popular culture, Internet and telecommunications, theatre, anthropological knowledge, practice and performance
Dr Stefanie Lotter
LOTTER Stefanie - SA IMG - 485 186 56

Nepali society and culture; museology; social and cultural anthropology of the Himalaya; elite studies; heritage studies

  • Tel: +44(0)20 7898 4711
  • Email: sl70@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 460
  • Academic Support Hours: Thursday: 10.00-12.00
Dr Marina Marouda
Research Associate
Marina Marouda

Anthropology of death and life; religion and ritual; Buddhism; social study of life sciences; anthropology of biomedicine; innovative technologies and science-based entrepreneurship; market and exchange circuits; global markets and entrepreneurial diasporas; Việt Nam; Southeast Asia; Vietnamese diasporas in Eastern Europe.

Dr Reza Masoudi-Nejad
Research Associate
Reza Masoudi-Nejad

Public space, ritual studies, urban violence, urban transformation; Iran, India.

  • Email: rm33@soas.ac.uk
  • Room: 310
  • Academic Support Hours: Tuesday 11.00-12.00

Emeritus Staff

Dr John R Campbell
Emeritus Reader
John Campbell

East and Northeastern Africa; refugees and asylum law, legal anthropology, development, urbanisation, civil society, ethnicity and nationalism.

Professor Richard Fardon
Emeritus Professor
Richard Fardon
Ethnographically, the anthropology of West Africa in general, with a particular focus on the ‘Middle Belt’ of Nigeria and Cameroon. Ethnographic interests, both contemporary and historical, include: politics and religion; ethnicity and identity; material culture. Anthropologically, contemporary theories in social anthropology, and the history of twentieth-century British social anthropology.
Professor Trevor H J Marchand
Emeritus Professor
Trevor Marchand
Arabia (Yemen), West Africa (Northern Nigeria and Mali) and England: craft, carpentry and traditional building practices; apprenticeship, learning and cognition; space, place and architecture; theory in anthropology.
Professor David Parkin
Emeritus Professor
David Parkin

Lecturer and professor of African anthropology, SOAS 1964-1996; professor of social anthropology, University of Oxford 1996-2008, emeritus thereafter. Fieldwork in eastern Africa 1966-2002 for a number of years in total, among Luo, Giriama and Swahili-speakers, on Islam, entrepreneurship, political ethnicity, language, material culture, and medical anthropology.

Professor Richard Tapper
Emeritus Professor
Richard Tapper

Lecturer, Reader and Professor in SOAS 1967-2004; fieldwork in Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey; published on pastoral nomadism, ethnic and tribal minorities and the state, material cultures, culinary cultures, anthropology of Islam, Iranian Cinema.

Admin Office

Ms Christine Djumpah
Academic Support Manager
Image of Christine Djumpah

Manages academic and student support in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Centre for Gender Studies, and Centre for Global Media and Communications.

Dr George Bartlett
Student Support Officer
Image of George Bartlett

Provides student support for all undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology.