Check out this review of our own Sanjay Srivastava's 'Masculinity, Consumerism and the Post-national Indian City: Streets, Neighbourhoods, Home': "The prolific scholar offers unparalleled insight into the growth and shaping of Indian cities." Read in full here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

The SOAS Food Forum continues this Monday with Professor Hanna Garth (Princeton University): ‘The Los Angeles Food Justice Movement as Placemaking or Problematic Inclusion’ 📅 13:15-14:45, 10 November 📍 Room R301 See the full line-up of talks below 👇

How do alliances survive in times of polarised politics? Our own @emmacrewe.bsky.social & Michelle M. Taylor-Robinson explore this question in an article for State Politics & Policy Quarterly blending ethnography and network analysis. Read here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Very special, small exhibition 👇 plus follow SOAS’s Dept of Anthropology and Sociology for events, new books, research funding…

Mursi Voices: A film by Olisarali Olibui and Ben Young that features in the @soasgallery.bsky.social exhibition Learning from South Omo youtu.be/lMA8pJOuxDY?... @soasanthro.bsky.social

Today we started the installation of Learning from South Omo at @soasgallery.bsky.social. Opens 14 October 2025 to 13 December 2025 www.soas.ac.uk/about/event/... @soasanthro.bsky.social

📌What does it mean to ‘return’? Join the SOAS Centre for Migration & Diaspora Studies for a two-day workshop on the concept and practices of return. 📅 17 Oct, 5:30pm, DLT, SOAS 📅 18 Oct, 1pm, SOAS Bar 🔗 Details & registration: shorturl.at/ScRNW @naomihossain.bsky.social @terminalias.bsky.social

📣Our weekly departmental research seminar lineup is now live! This year we are running the series with our own Centre for Mental Health Research in Action (CAMHRA). Talks will invite us to think in new ways about forms of life, distress, wellbeing and personhood. Wednesdays 3-5pm, RB01, SOAS.

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/r... If interested in physics, time, space, threat of war, ethics…. then have a listen 👇

This is an amazing line up for our @soasanthro.bsky.social dept research seminar series, Wed 3-5pm, organised by Bhrigu Singh and Neil Armstrong.

Learning from South Omo - exhibition at the Gabre Kristos Desta Centre, Addis Ababa youtu.be/00fuNry4sV8?... @soasuni.bsky.social @soasanthro.bsky.social

This is about how #Txlege departs from common perception. Bipartisan lawmaking thrives but is under threat. Prof Taylor-Robinson (a pol sci) and I (an anthropologist) offer a unique take. @scottbraddock.bsky.social won’t be surprised, cos his knowledge runs very deep, but others might be. Free👇

#OpenAccess from State Politics & Policy Quarterly - Cooperation in Polarized Legislatures: Learning from the Case of the Texas State House of Representatives - https://cup.org/46IRNJ7 - @emmacrewe.bsky.social#OpenAccess& Michelle M. Taylor-Robinson #FirstView

Are we losing the capacity to collaborate in political world? Probably. But not so in academic world. See here for three new articles about research collaborations in Texas, Ethiopia and Brazil: www.emmacrewe.com

Lewis Goodall is doing here what journalists should, asking us (and esp politicians) to think about what’s coming down the track. This is now urgent: the regulation of AI podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

A huge thank you to Professor Sir John Curtice for delivering last night’s Michael Ryle Lecture on the theme of “Can Britain’s Two Party System Survive?” 👏

Being a university dept manager is fun when you feel appreciated. My reply to a brilliant but risky idea 👇

Amnesty International UK Vigil for Palestinian journalists killed by Israel in Gaza – speech by Wael Al-Dahdouh on Wednesday 10th September 2025 at 5.30 (Wael will be speaking at 6pm for ten minutes) WHERE: Richmond House (opposite Downing St), Whitehall, London www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releas...

The NACCH 2025 International Academic Conference on Newah Cultural Heritage convenes 6 Sept (online) & 13–14 Sept (in person). With 31 papers from 18 countries, scholars, community leaders and activists will examine continuity, change & global significance of Newah culture. More info here: nacch.org

Award-winning screenwriter and story consultant James Moran offers an innovative five-session course at @soasanthro.bsky.social, drawing on exceptional storytelling such as Pixar animation, Iranian cinema, and Chekhov. I have heard amazing things about James and his courses so really recommend this.

This September, I'll be running a short course on creative ethnographic writing at SOAS. We'll learn narrative techniques from HBO dramas, international cinema and Russian literature! Sign up & details: academicstorytelling.substack.com/p/new-short-... @soasanthro.bsky.social @soasuni.bsky.social

Two fully funded PhDs with me at SOAS. Within my ERC project; one researching in Paris, the other in Düsseldorf. Exploring the impact of Chinese capital on European urban space, the cultural industries, and social media. More info here: drive.google.com/file/d/12srA... Deadline is 21 July.

Exciting job as a Programme Manager working for the wonderful Marloes Janson (in SOAS anthro dept) on a fab new research programme about the nexus between religion and sport in 4 African countries. Should have experience of partnerships in Africa: vacancies.soas.ac.uk/job/740734

Award-winning screenwriter and story consultant James Moran offers an innovative five-session course at @soasanthro.bsky.social, drawing on exceptional storytelling such as Pixar animation, Iranian cinema, and Chekhov. I have heard amazing things about James and his courses so really recommend this.

We at @instituteforgovernment.org.uk have coordinated a letter in @thetimes.com today in which numerous individuals and organisations call on the government to withdraw its mistaken rules which are having a serious chilling effect on civil servants speaking in public…

📢📢📢 CfP: What is a Parliament? Interdisciplinary workshop on 19th September 2025 in London. Full details below. Kindly sponsored by Birkbeck, the University of Birmingham and @psa-parliaments.bsky.social Please apply and/or spread the word!

SOAS colleague Yair Wallach gives us hope and reliable accounts in an increasingly bleak world. Follow him, if you don’t already, and you’ll see what I mean.

From @ihabhassan.bsky.social (on X). Red are zones marked for evacuation. 2+ m people are supposed to fit into the green zones. It sends shivers down my spine.

How poor we in the UK - incl London I say as a Londoner - would be without immigrants. Of course almost everyone in the UK was an immigrant if you go back a long way. A beautifully written piece 👇

Immigration is not too high in the UK. Alienation, loneliness, homelessness and poverty are too high. So let’s work on those, prioritising those most in need. How on earth did we allow this extremely widely held research & ethics-based logic to become debased?

Watched last night - it’s about villages in the West Bank being driven out. It will stay with me for a long time. Highly recommended.

Incredible inaugural lecture by Bhrigupati Singh. Erudite, generous, captivating. He represented our dept so beautifully ❤️

Article just published on Parliament’s strategic ignorance about transatlantic trafficking and enslavement of Africans & reparations. Time to apologise and discuss the debt we owe: brill.com/view/journal...

Invaluable resource 👇

Recommendations to Parliament & Gov on including extremely sensible reforms in addition to excluding hereditary peers. This opportunity prob won’t arise again for decades. Research-based lawmaking on offer 👇

Asked yesterday for a recommendation about where to donate in response to the Myanmar earthquake. @healthpoverty.bsky.social is the INGO I have the greatest respect for: www.healthpovertyaction.org

Happy Nowruz (New Year) all. Whatever you are doing at 9:01 you will be doing lots of in the coming year so turn off yr phones, drop out of meetings and do whatever you love best.

Looking for scholarships to study Master's in Medical Anthropology and Mental Health or MRes in Social Anthropology at SOAS? CAMHRA scholarships cover fees (UK or international). Deadline: April 30th. www.soas.ac.uk/study/studen...

I really like saying: “please don’t minute this”, in committee meetings cos then people really listen closely.

Foreign office plans to hold talks with CARICOM (Caribbean governments) on reparations for transatlantic trafficking and enslavement. Long long overdue. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02...

Democracy without parties is individualism on steroids. Politics needs team work, debate, attention to ethics and compromises. We need to keep explaining what’s been known for centuries 👇

He writes from the US: ‘We’re overwhelmed by vandalism, by the clamor as spiteful people shatter the load-bearing infrastructure of a functioning society’. 👇 In the UK we should look ahead and prevent the potential for such vandalism. The next few years are critical.

Just had my teeth drilled for an hour (!) by my new dentist Farshad. It was gruesome, esp when close to the nerve, but he explained every move, instrument, material, and technological advance, in the most soothing voice imaginable. He understood that research is my therapy.

Action on climate and inequality inconvenient, entangled and existentially urgent 👇

One of my daughters is playing chess with Iraqi refugees in Calais. She has excellent timing - making connections with those fleeing violence at this moment. The other works in a team giving advice to those in debt. What incredible daughters. ❤️

Well that’s hopeful 👇

Interested in strategic ignorance, long after Ilana Gershon wrote about it. How to avoid? Its not about a word check to ensure you don’t mis-speak. Needs a huge effort to educate oneself, I find, to avoid stupidity, cruelty & ignorance. Heart-breaking this has to be fought for, again, these days.

And if Trump frames these pardons - of his supporters - as depoliticising justice, then he (just perhaps more realistic, his wavering supporters) need to read David Runciman’s Political Hypocrisy double quick. He’s poisoning how people think of politics. Very dangerous.

If Musk doesn’t notice what he’s doing, and the first salute didn’t make him think - yikes I should never do that again - and he does it again, we have a monumental problem.

The election of the Speaker of the Texas House is happening right now. This seemingly small event could change the world. What happens in Texas is a warning to the whole globe. It’s a contest between those favouring bipartisan politics and those (arguably) heading towards pre authoritarianism.