Lecturer in Media in Development and International Journalisms
South Asia with a focus on India; transnational news spheres with a special focus on India; Development discourses in India and its articulation in mainstream and alternate news forums; environmental politics.
Reader in the History of South Asian Art & Archaeology
Architecture, sculpture and painting in South Asia, especially in southern India; pilgrimage and sacred geography; material religion; colonialism and material culture.
Arab and early Persian painting and the arts of the Islamic book in general, including the production of manuscripts of the Qur'an; art and material culture of the Islamic world; Fatimid art and architecture; the arts of Islamic Spain; artistic contacts between the Islamic World and Europe; aspects of contemporary Islamic art.
Modern and contemporary art and critical theory; Southeast Asian art history and visual studies (expertise in Vietnam and Cambodia); urban studies; postcolonial studies; theories of subjectivity, space, diaspora, transnationalism, intermedia and aesthetics.
Music in the Mande world; Music of Mali, Guinea, Guinea Bissau; gender and music in West Africa; popular musics of Atlantic Africa; childhood music learning in West Africa; Cuban music, especially son and rumba; radio as a medium; and the world music industry.
Dr Heather Elgood is the Course Director of the Diploma in Asian Art. She is a specialist in Persian, Jain, Sultanate and Mughal manuscript painting as well as the ritual arts of Hinduism.
Modern and contemporary arts of Africa, including its histories of photography; visual and material cultures of West Africa, and their linkages to diasporic arts past and present; the arts of the Benin kingdom, masquerade, textiles and other art forms in southern Nigeria, as well as a particular focus on contemporary arts in Nigeria.
Visual and material culture of the Korean peninsula; Pre-modern Korean burial practices, particularly of the Koryŏ period (AD918-1392); Arts of the Koryŏ period, especially bronze mirrors and ceramics; 20th century collecting of Korean artefacts; Heritage and museum practices; Gender and material culture.
Ethnomusicology; anthropology; Korean music; music traditions in Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Thailand, and Siberia; studies of religion; composition; education; shamanism; early keyboard instruments, players and restorers
Music of southern Africa and the African Horn (Sudan); advocacy ethnomusicology; sound/music, memory and place; forced migration, cultural mapping and borderland identities; human rights and development
Senior Lecturer in Critical Media and Cultural Studies
Critical Theory; Media Theory; East Asian Media and Cultural Studies; Media Spectacle and Uran Space in East Asian Cities; Screen Culture in Korea; New Media and Democracy in Korea; Global Sports Events (the Olympics and the World Cup)
Kadialy Kouyate comes from a very large African musical family of dialis, who are well known in Mandinka history. Since 2005 he has been teaching the Kora to undergraduate and postgraduate students at SOAS.
David L. Snellgrove Senior Lecturer in Tibetan and Buddhist Art
History of art and architecture of the Himalayan region; Buddhist art of the western Himalayas; Gandharan art; presenting and exhibiting Buddhist art; heritage, preservation and conservation.
Senior Lecturer in Arab Media and Political Communication
Middle East, especially the Arab world; international political communication; Arab cultural politics; Arab cultural studies; memory studies and oral history; Islamist movements; social movements and media; diasporas; ethnic minorities; transnational movements and communications.
Pictorial arts of China - especially painting and calligraphy; East Asian narrative art; canons, collecting and connoisseurship; Chinese art and modernity
Lecturer in the History of Architecture & Archaeology of the Islamic Middle East
Islamic architecture and urbanism; sociological dimensions of the art and architecture of North Africa, especially Morocco; architectural and visual theory; Islamic studies.
China and Southeast Asia, particularly Myanmar; Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD); Information Society and digital divides; localized information sharing practices and media production; intermediation in digital media use; rural markets and new media.
Art, archaeology, and architecture of Anatolia, the eastern Mediterranean, and SW Asia from the 11-14th centuries with a special interest in landscape, urbanism, and ceramics
Sanju Sahai represents the distinguished lineage of tabla players and teachers from Banaras. He performs internationally as a soloist and in a variety of ensembles, and has been teaching tabla at SOAS for many years.
Senior Teaching Fellow, History of Art and Archaeology
Contemporary art and curatorial strategies in twentieth and twenty-first century Africa, Brazil and the Caribbean; post-independence visual arts in Angola, Madagascar and Haiti; post-colonial critique and trans-national exhibition practice.
Senior Teaching Fellow, History of Art and Archaeology
He is now focusing on the evidence in Indochina for the influence of tantric or esoteric Buddhism, developed in the great monasteries of the Ganges valley and diffused and developed in different ways through much of Asia.
Southeast Asian arts, aesthetics, literatures and cultural histories, with a focus on Cambodia, from the Angkorian to the post-Angkorian to the contemporary; Theravadin Buddhist arts, literatures and ritual; cultural heritage; sexual difference; deconstruction; memory and textuality.
Pratapaditya Pal Senior Lecturer in Curating and Museology of Asian Art
Chinese and Buddhist art in museums; history of Yuanmingyuan (or ‘Summer Palace’) collections; museology; colonialism and material culture; post-colonial critiques of museum representations; history and theory of collecting; art and anthropology.
History and theory of Indian classical music; dhrupad; Newar music of Nepal; historical ethnomusicology; analysis of musical performance; cognitive approaches to music; music and meaning; music and religion
Iranian cinema; popular cultures in the Middle East and North Africa; Third Cinema; transcultural media, especially film; film theory; visual anthropology.
Linguistics, Arabic Literature and history and Politics of the Arab World. Lecturer in Arabic Language and Culture at the University of Westminster.
My research interests include language, politics and literature of the Arab world in particular. In Arabic culture, political discourses tend to draw on rich political and literary traditions which are used by various groups in different ways. I have researched, alongside other scholars, a number of interrelated themes, including nationalist and Islamist discourses and their interrelations in Palestine, political poetry, avant-garde classical and modern Arabic poetry, the politics and culture of movements such as the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, and the Lebanese movement Hizbullah; language and national identity in the Palestinian territories and postcolonial ideas and their relevance to Palestinian conditions and Arab narratives in general.
History of Art & Architecture of the Muslim World, focusing on Mughal South Asia; Artistic, historic and cultural links between 17th Century Muslim South Asia and Iran, Anatolia and Europe; urbanism in Mughal South Asia.
Ethnomusicology; music of East Asia especially Japan; Japanese folk and theatre music; music and linguistics; Indonesian gamelan and Javanese street music
Alessandra specialises in the study of dance performance and media, especially photography. She has done extensive research in Indonesia and also in India. She has to her credit numerous publications.
Music and social movements; music and language; the internet and the music industry; popular music in Japan; Japanese hip-hop; music and trauma; children's songs; Cuba; ethnomusicology; music theory.
Massoumeh Torfeh, has been appointed UN Director of Strategic Communication and Spokesperson for Afghanistan and is a former senior producer in BBC World Service, specializes on the politics and media of Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia.
Arts of Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Cambodia cultural landscape; pre- and proto-historic Myanmar, Pyu and Mon culture; visual culture, social memory and sacred landscape
Political economy and sociology of globalisation; global power structure and grand strategy; empire theory and US hegemony; politics and development of the Middle East and North Africa; sociology of religion; Islam and Islamic Fundamentalism; social change and social theory.
African film and video (particularly their intersection); filmic mediations of African performance arts (music, dance, theatre); literary adaptation in Africa; contemporary film theory and 'World Cinema'; exile/immigration and violence in relation to African screen media; structures of film production, distribution, and exhibition in Africa; use of African languages in film
Narrativity; Cultural Memory; Religion and Gender; Feminist Historiography; Postcolonial theory; Postsecularism and gender; Intellectual history in the study of religions.
Contemporary Japanese culture, with particular interest in Japanese media and popular culture, representations of 'Otherness', social phenomena and war memory.
China: Hong Kong and Guangdong Province (PRC) Chinese media, newspapers, television, journalism, popular culture, Internet and telecommunications, theatre, anthropological knowledge, practice and performance
Classical and Modern Persian literature, Orientalism in 18th-20th century Europe, Middle Eastern minority writers in Europe, Diaspora studies, music performance, translation studies
Applied International Relations, weapons of mass destruction, diplomacy, globalisation and corporate accountability, globalisation and democracy, globalisation and energy, the role of international non-governmental organisations, the United Nations and the Nazis.
The Indian Community in South Africa; Politics and identity in South Africa; African and Asian Communities in Britain; Political and cultural issues in Diaspora Studies; Historical anthropology; Philosophical issues in anthropology.
Burmese languages and Burmese linguistics; language policy in Burma; experimental and acoustic phonetics; computer lexicography; minority languages of South East Asia; Mon-Khmer and Tibeto Burman languages; tone languages. Sign languages in Burma and South East Asia.
Anthropology of religion, theory in the study of religions, continental philosophy, Gramsci and religion, intercultural and inter-religious dialogue, minorities (Dalits), mysticism and heresy, non-Western Christianities, Mediterranean anthropology; South-Asia (India, Bangladesh), Sardinia, world philosophies.
