Pictorial arts of China - especially painting and calligraphy; East Asian narrative art; canons, collecting and connoisseurship; Chinese art and modernity
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.
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.
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.
Director of Recruitment, Admissions & Marketing (T1)
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
Director of Recruitment, Admissions & Marketing (T2)
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.
Colonial and postcolonial studies, especially South African literature (the Cape, Wicomb, Coetzee); gender and the culture of travel; Indian Ocean diasporas; theories of fiction and history.
Urdu literature; Postcolonial literature and theory; gender studies; South Asian writing; Pakistani literature and culture; Multiculturalism; Muslim Studies
Applied linguistics and literacy in language education and society, The cultural politics of language, knowledge production, language and literacy education in multilingual contexts, Global English in the internationalisation of higher education countries, Higher Education in Malaysia and ASEA.
Expertise in/Research interests include: Critical Theory, curatorial practice in the ethics and philosophies of literature, with a focus on African cultural production & literary activism; the intersect of global literary & visual cultures (inc. the graphic novel, comics, & pulp fiction); South African writer, editor and reflexive art critic Ivan Vladislavić. Founder and Editorial Director of the blog, Africa in Words.
Postcolonial Nigerian literature, contemporary African and African American women writers, black diaspora, gender and the political possibilities of music.
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.
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.
Senior Lecturer in Critical Media and Cultural Studies
Critical Theory; Media Theory; Aesthetics; Art, Technology and Politics; Media Spectacle and Urban Space in East Asian Cities; Screen Culture and Media Art in Korea; Mega-Events in the Global South
Curating archaeological collections; university museums and curriculum reform; heritage interpretation; artefact and material culture studies; ancient metalwork; archaeology of the 1st millennium BC eastern Mediterranean
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.
Percival David Professor of the History of Art, Head of Department
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.
Nasser D Khalili Professor of Islamic Art and Archaeology
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
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.
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.
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.
Arts of Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Cambodia cultural landscape; pre- and proto-historic Myanmar, Pyu and Mon culture; visual culture, social memory and sacred landscape
Professorial Research Associate & Senior Teaching Fellow
State formation; agricultural transition; urbanisation; landscape archaeology; geoarchaeology, tectonic archaeology; East Asian archaeology especially Japanese archaeology and prehistory/protohistory
History of photography in China; Modern and contemporary arts of China; Founder of photographyofchina.com, platform whose goal is to present photographic material related to China.
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.
Islamic art history, aesthetics and visual culture. Phenomenology of artworks, cognitive processes, and issues of conceptualisation of visual forms in Islam. Relation between theory and practice in Islamic artistic creation.
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.
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
Japanese literature, drama and thought, primarily of the Tokugawa period, with particular interest in Bunraku and Kabuki theatre and the plays of Chikamatsu
Modern and Contemporary Japanese history. Social and cultural history of the 20th century, especially the intersection of consumer capitalism and historical memory.
Modern Thai Cultural Studies, Cinema and Literature; gender studies with reference to Thailand; literary criticism and South East Asian Literatures in a comparative context; Western film set in South East Asia
Critical Theory; Media Theory; Aesthetics; Art, Technology and Politics; Media Spectacle and Urban Space in East Asian Cities; Screen Culture and Media Art in Korea; Mega-Events in the Global South
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
Middle East, especially Palestine, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon, international political communication; media and conflict; critical global media studies; activism and media; social movements; memory studies and oral history; diasporas and ethnic minorities.
Modern Indonesian cinema and literature; queer studies and sexuality in Indonesia; representation of genders and sexuality in Southeast Asian film and literatures; traditional Malay literature
Classical and modern Arabic literature and culture, with emphasis on narrative and storytelling, comparative narratology and critical theory, and gendered thinking and discourse.
Iranian cinema; popular cultures in the Middle East and North Africa; Third Cinema; transcultural media, especially film; film theory; visual anthropology.
Using Film for Social Change; Transnational Feminist Filmmaking; Sickle Cell Disease in Nigeria; Sexual and Reproductive Health in Nigeria; Theory and Creative Practice of Making Documentary and Narrative Feature Films in Nigeria.
Film, Media and Literature – currently focusing on Korean Film and Media: The Cold War culture, media and gender (Korea/Germany), shamanism in visual media, Korean cinema and history
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.
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
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
Music of South Asia; Hindustani classical music; historical ethnomusicology; cultural history; historical musicology and musical aesthetics; lyric, song, and musical literature; music and gender; music and religion; history of emotions
Ethnomusicology; anthropology; Korean music; music traditions in Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Thailand, and Siberia; studies of religion; composition; education; shamanism; early keyboard instruments, players and restorers
Audio/visual editing and production; ethnomusicology; music and language; music performance; music transcription and analysis; South Asian classical and folk music systems.
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.
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.
Rowan Pease is the Editorial Manager for SOAS journals. She learnt Chinese at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Xiamen University, China, before undertaking postgraduate study in ethnomusicology at SOAS. She is also a senior teaching fellow in the SOAS music department.
Ethnomusicology; music of East Asia especially Japan; Japanese folk and theatre music; music and linguistics; Indonesian gamelan and Javanese street music
