I came to anthropology out of a literature background, but one which had always focussed on the social context of representation and symbolisation. I did a BA degree in English Literature at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, a Folklore and Folklife MA at University of Pennsylvania, a Comparative Literature MA at SUNY at Buffalo (where I worked with Rene Girard), before finally ending up where that trajectory was aiming at the Institute of Social Anthropology at Oxford. I did my DPhil fieldwork on Jerusalem pilgrimage, spending one of the most intense couple of years of my life living in Jerusalem's Old City (1983-85), before returning to the UK to teach at UCL and Kent. The first Palestinian intifada drew me back to the West Bank, and I have continued to work there until the current day (see research below). When things began to seem a bit rough there for fieldwork (or more to the point for the institutions which gave grants) I went to the 'safer' territory of Yugoslavia to study nationalist mobilisation within a federated state, only to get caught up in the opening days of the war. I've remained engaged with both regions, and have recently branched out a bit to work in Cyprus. I'm married to a feminist professor of Film Studies, am a keen cyclist, like to cook, keep an allotment, and am a rather obsessive collector of books, music, contemporary art, and ethnic antiques.

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Selected Publications

'In dubious Battle on the Plains of Heav'n': the Politics of Possession in Jerusalem's Holy Sepulchre. History and Anthropology. XXII. 3. September 2011. pp. 371-399.

A Place for the Palestinians in the Altneuland: Herzl, Anti-Semitism, and the Jewish State. in Surveillance and Control in Israel/Palestine: Population, Territory and Power (Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Politics). eds. Elia Zureik, David Lyon & Yasmeen Abu-Laban. New York and London: Routledge. 2010. pp. 65-79. 

Orthodox-Muslim Interactions at 'Mixed Shrines' in Macedonia. in Eastern Christians in Anthropological Perspective (ed. Chris Hann and Hermann Goltz). Berkeley: University of California Press. 2010. pp. 195-219. 

Israel’s Wall and the Logic of Encystation: Sovereign Exception or Wild Sovereignty? in Crisis of the State: War and Social Upheaval (ed. Bruce Kapferer and Bjørn Enge Bertelsen). New York: Berghahn Books. 2009. pp. 292-304. 

At Home Abroad: the Field Site as Second Home, Ethnologia Europaea. Vol. XXXVII: 1-2. pp. 140-148. April 2008. 

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Although my current role of Head of School prevents me from taking an active role in module teaching, I continue to convene the MA in Social Anthropology and the MA in the Anthropology of Ethnicity, Nationalism and Identity. When I'm not being an administrator I teach advanced modules in anthropological theory on both the BA and MA programmes, a module on the Southern Mediterranean, the Photographic Workshop, and the MA modules linked to the ethnicity, nationalism and identity programme. I also supervise ten PhD students. 

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I've been working over the past couple of decades on issues of how people in communities marked by diversity — particularly by different religious affiliations — manage for the most part to live together but, in certain circumstances, divide into antagonistic groupings which war with each other.

This concern, prompted by my ongoing work in Jerusalem and the Israeli Occupied West Bank (a.k.a. Palestine), involved me first of all with nationalist mobilisation amongst Palestinians and then brought me into Yugoslavia on the cusp of it becoming 'Former Yugoslavia'. It's also made me very interested in how 'shared' religious sites operate -- how Muslims, Christians, and Jews can cohabit shrines for long periods of time, and how and why that cohabitation explodes under certain promptings into expulsive violence. This work, funded by the British Academy, has brought me into research in Macedonia, a fascinating area of continuing, if occasionally endangered, inter-communal cohabitation in the midst of the for the most part ethnically divided territories of Former Yugoslavia.

Recently, prompted by the catastrophic developments in Israel-Palestine, I've been working on processes designed to block any contacts between communities and this project — concerned with 'walling' -- has not only led to investigations of the impact of the Israeli 'Separation Barrier' on populations on both sides of it but also to fieldwork in Cyprus, itself divided by the 'Green Line'. This work has been funded by the Council for British Research in the Levant. All of this work is dedicated to a critical investigation of the — I believe ungrounded — tenets of 'Identity Politics' which underlie powerfully dangerous arguments such as those of the advocates of the 'Clash of Civilisations'.

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Supervision

I supervise a number of PhD students conducting research within the field of Social Anthropology.

Ruba al Akash

Caroline Bennett

Brian Campbell

Michael Costello

Kate Moore

Justin Otten

Maria Peirano Olate

Maria Radan

Joshua Rickard

Mahmud Sumon

 

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Editorial Boards of Anthropological Theory, Critique of Anthropology, and Focaal (former editor of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute)

                               

Board Member of the Horniman Fund for Anthropological Research (www.therai.org.uk/grants/research_funds.html#EmslieHorniman)

 

Recent Conferences:

19-20 May 2011, Invited Lecture, "Secularist versus Sectarian Strategies of Mobilisation:  Israel/Palestine and Former Yugoslavia" at conference 'Pilgrimage in Europe Today', University Centre Saint Ignatius Antwerp, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium

6-7 May 2010. Keynote Lecture. "Choreography of Sacred Spaces: State, Religion, and Conflict Resolution" at Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey. Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion and the Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life, Columbia University. New York, New York. 

12-15 April 2010. Keynote Lecture. "Sainthood in Fragile States", Danish Institute, Damascus, Syria. Sponsored by the Department of Cross Cultural and Regional Studies. University of Copenhagen. Damascus, Syria.

7 November 2009. "Shared Spaces". Goethe Institute (hosted by PRIO - Cyprus Centre), Nicosia Buffer Zone, Cyprus. 

28 March 2009. Keynote, “The fate of sharing in an age of Nations: Rethinking syncretism in the wake of Empire” at Eastern Christianity in Post-Imperial Societies. Religious Studies Programme, Department of History, Central European University. Budapest, Hungary. 

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