Feelings of hurt and hate in post-partition South Asia: A Conversation with Neeti Nair

In the book, Hurt Sentiments, historian Neeti Nair traces a political history of secularism, one which made a virtue out of hurt in twentieth-century India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Nair asks how a religious sentiment of hurt come to define the place of law, culture, ideologies, and belonging in this region. In constituent assembly proceedings, courtroom …

Between privilege and precarity: European soldiers remobilising as private security contractors in Africa. An interview with Jethro Norman

What happens to soldiers after they leave the military? From the Middle East to Africa, increasing numbers of demobilised soldiers have found work in private military and security companies or as security consultants, military trainers, and risk management professionals. While often in the news, sustained ethnographic research with this group is limited, and they are …

Winner of the Public Anthropologist Award 2022

We are pleased to announce that the winner of the Public Anthropologist Award 2022 is Catherine Besteman for her book Militarized Global Apartheid. Catherine Besteman is Francis F. Bartlett and Ruth K. Bartlett Professor of Anthropology at Colby College. Throughout her career, she has worked on issues related to power dynamics that produce and maintain inequality, racism and …

The Poland-Belarus Border: A Conversation with Marta Bivand Erdal

Saumya: Could you share a little about your research on migration? Marta: I am a human geographer, and I am interested in emigration as well as immigration and transnational ties that result from people moving from one place to another, but who have family members and close people in other places around the world. An …

The Judiciary and the Evacuation: Interview with Afghan Judge Tayeba Parsa

Antonio: Would you like to share your personal trajectory and the experiences that led you to become a judge? Tayeba: On the eve of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, my parents fled to Iran, fearing what would happen if they remained, and determined to avoid my father being conscripted. My siblings and I learned tailoring …

The Lion’s War: Life Histories, Forgotten Art and Alternative Geographies. An Interview with Paolo Israel

I Interviewed Paolo Israel on December 10, 2020, via Zoom, as has become the norm during the pandemic. Our conversation revolved around war and violence in Mozambique, especially the insurgency that is currently raging in Cabo Delgado province. In our conversation we looked critically at Harry West’s take on witchcraft, the limitations of Marxist and …

Winner of the Public Anthropologist Award 2021

We are pleased to announce that the winner of the Public Anthropologist Award 2021 is Ather Zia for her book Resisting Disappearance: Military Occupation and Women’s Activism in Kashmir, University of Washington Press (2019) and Zubaan Publishing (2020). Ather Zia is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Gender Studies Program at the University of Northern Colorado …

Building a school in the ‘dark hell’ of the Moria camp: A conversation about hope, politics and humanity with refugee entrepreneur Zekria Farzad

The interview was conducted in January 2021, but this text also incorporates some extracts from previous and later conversations. The text has been edited and amended for clarity by Heidi Mogstad and Zekria Farzad. —-—– Introduction: In humanitarian (and some scholarly) discourses, refugees are often portrayed as passive and powerless victims stripped of political agency …

Migration, Labour and Violence in Northeast India: An interview with Dr. Dolly Kikon

Saumya Pandey (SP): Shall we start with your research journey? How did you come to write about the lives of migrant workers from Northeast India? Dolly Kikon (DK): My work that we are speaking about relates to the second book I wrote with Bengt G. Karlsson, Leaving the Land: Indigenous Migration and Affective Labour in …