Frailty, mortality and complexity: The osteological paradox and beyond
Seminar
Paleoepidemiology is concerned with exploration of disease of past population, and in particular the mortality risk associated with factors such as skeletal indicators of disease (such as bone lesions), as well as socio-cultural factors such as class which may impact health. The exploration of such…
The Revolutionary’s Two Temporalities? Activism, Failure, and the Event
Seminar
Radical activists struggle to assess actions both for their relatively immediate effects, and for their potential longer-term consequences. Provisional failures can become resources for future victories, while erstwhile successes can dissolve after apparent achievement. Drawing from ethnography…
Spiritual Fandom: Pentecostalism, Cosmopolitan Imaginaries and Hillsong
Seminar
This paper draws on my new book Cool Christianity: Hillsong and the Fashioning of Cosmopolitan Identities (OUP 2024). It argues that, as Hillsong became a global megachurch on the back of its bands that toured the world and its services that resemble rock concerts, international youth…
Kin and Connection: bodies and relations in archaeology and ancient genetics
Seminar
Kin and Connection: bodies and relations in archaeology and ancient genetics In conjunction with more precise absolute dating, biomolecular data (ie, aDNA, stable isotopes) have fundamentally changed the practice of archaeology, the questions archaeologists ask, and the possibilities for…
Human-alloprimate coexistence? Current debates and considerations
Seminar
Facilitating co-existence, defined here as sustainable sympatry, between humans and alloprimates requires careful thought and attention to an array of realities - from the material/ecological to the social/perceptual. Anthropology, sometimes seen to be at the nexus for tensions between interpretive…
Monsters and Crises
Seminar
This paper has two aims: (1) to introduce the broader project of Monster Anthropology that my colleague Geir Presterudstuen and I have been working on for over a decade now; and (2) to illustrate how an anthropological focus on monsters can add new perspectives on the ways in which we live with, in…
The white man in the desert: Aboriginal whiteness and settler belonging
Seminar
In the dry season of 1889 on the remote northwest coast of Australia, a station manager with a violent past went in search of a white man rumoured to be living deep in the desert. This episode is the starting point for an exploration into the strange history of Indigenous whiteness, from the…