News & Upcoming Events

Professor Sax’s book Dancing the Self: Personhood and Performance in the Pandav Lila of Garhwal (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002 ) has been chosen as one of a selection of 100 books published about the sub-continent from the year 2000 onwards, that will be curated by Pramod Kumar at the Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa, this coming December.

The Department of Anthropology welcomes Dr. Dhammika Herath as their current Humboldt post-doctoral Researcher.

Webinar for the book launch of "Tides of Life", edited by Dr. Aditya Ghosh.

The Department of Anthropology welcomes Dr. Philipp Zehmisch as new Assistant Professor.

The Department of Anthropology welcomes Pallabi Roy, M.phil as a new MAHASSA-Coordinator next to Heribert Beckmann, M.A..

The Department of Anthropology invites you to the book launch for Clémence Jullien & Roger Jeffery's (eds) (2021) Childbirth in South Asia: Old challenges and new paradoxes (New Delhi: Oxford University Press) on 9 December. More details here

Medical Anthropology at UCL

Society for Medical Anthropology (SMA)

Medical Anthropology Europe (MAE)

Medical Anthropology Young Scholars

Curare. Zeitschrift für Medizinethnologie

AG Medical Anthropology

Medizinethnologie Körper, Gesundheit und Heilung in einer globalisierten Welt

On Friday, 27 June, Prof. Sax gave an invited talk on “Jinns and Exorcism from an Anthropological Point of View” at the Hounslow Jamia Masjid, one of Great Britain’s largest mosques. The talk was pre-recorded, and played to the congregation as a supplement to the main speaker of the day, Mr. Walid Zamzam. It can be seen here.

On Friday, 25 June, Prof. Sax gave a talk (in Hindi) entitled मानवशास्त्रीय दृष्टिकोण से घुमन्तू समुदाय (Nomadic communities from an anthropological point of view). The talk was part of a Webinar 'घुमन्तू समुदाय को जानों' (Get to know nomadic communities) in which various nomadic groups presented themselves to the wider public. It was organized by the “Centre for Dialogue” based in Rajasthan.

11 November 2020: webinar for the book launch of “Tides of Life” [Details]

26.06.22 :(with Srishtee Sethi) “Contentious Borderlands? Reflections on Co-existence, Belonging, and Shared Histories at the India-Pakistan Border“, Borderland Futures: Technologies, Zones, Co-existences, Asian Borderlands Research Network, Seoul. 26.06.22

09.06.22 : “’We have been cut off from Rajasthan!’ Borders as contested metaphors of belonging among Pakistani Hindus,” Summer Symposium, Frobenius-Institute for Cultural Anthropological Reseach, Frankfurt am Main.09.06.22

08.06.22 “Borderland Ethics and Borderland Communities in Cholistan”, International Webinar, Department of Anthropology, The Islamia University of Bahawalpur, Pakistan.08.06.22

28.04.22 (with Srishtee Sethi) “Contentious Borderlands? Reflections on Co-existence, Belonging, and Shared Histories at the India Pakistan Border“, Panel „Belonging, Citizenship, and Conflict in South Asian Borderlands”, Annual South Asia Conference, Ireland India Institute, Dublin.28.04.22

11.02.22 : “The ‘Long Partition’ of Baltistan: On the Intersection of Morality and Nation-Building“, Conference Placing Pakistan: Space, Time, and the Everyday, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 11.02.22

25.10.21: “In Search of ‘the Indigenous’ in Pakistan: Reflections on the tension between decolonization, modernization, and sustainable conservation”, Panel State Formation and Identity in Conversation: Exploring the Relation, Conference “Anthropology and Conservation”, Royal Anthropological Institute, London, 25.10.21

30.09.21: “Making Sense of a Pandemic: Religion and COVID-19”, Panel Convener (with Natalie Lang), Conference of the German Anthropological Association Worlds, Zones, Atmospheres: Seismographies of the Anthropocene, University of Bremen, 30.09.21

27.07.2021: “Between the mainland and the deep blue sea: Transformation and Continuity in South Asian Islands and Littorals”, Discussant of Panel 05, European Conference of South Asian Studies (ECSAS), University of Vienna, 27.07.21

20.07.2021: “Borderland Ethics in Postcolonial Pakistan”, Colloquium, Department of Anthropology, Heidelberg University, 20.07.21

08.07.2021: “Partitioned Borderlands: Ethics of Collaboration and Resistance in Baltistan”, Conference Society and Morality in Eurasia: from Prehistory to the Present Day, Max-Planck-Institute for Social Anthropology, 08.07.21

15.05.2021: “The Politics of Artistic Identity”, Panel discussion, Exhibition Peepal and Banyan, Berlin 15.05.2021

30.11.2020: “Pluralist Ethics versus Communalist Politics in the Andaman Islands: Secular Nostalgia or a Model for India?“, Lecture Series Hindu-Muslim Encounters, South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University, 30.11.2020

07.11.2020: (with Srishtee Sethi) “Contentious Borderlands? Reflections on Co-existence, Belonging, and Shared Histories at the India-Pakistan Border“, Online Conference Borderlands Futures: Technologies, Zones, Co-existences, Asian Borderlands Research Network, 07.11.2020

16.09.2020: (with Srishtee Sethi) "A partitioned past: The shared history of refugees at the Western borderlands of India and Pakistan", Royal Anthropological Institute, Conference Anthropology and Geography: Dialogues Past, Present, and Future

06.07.2020: “Between Public and Private: Ethical dilemmas of coping with COVID-19 in Pakistan”, International Webinar Social Impact of Covid 19: Challenges and Prospects, Sangyartham Research Foundation

2021: The Movement for Global Mental Health: Critical Views from South and Southeast Asia. (Edited with Claudia Lang). Amsterdam University Press.

2021: The Movement for Global Mental Health: Critical Voices from South Asia and Beyond, pp. 7-36 in Sax, Willam S. and Claudia Lang, eds., The Movement for Global Mental Health: Critical Views from South and Southeast Asia. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

2021: Global Mental Therapy. pp. 271-299 in Sax, Willam S. and Claudia Lang, eds., The Movement for Global Mental Health: Critical Views from South and Southeast Asia. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

2021: Divine Kingdoms and Border Politics in the Western Himalaya. In Diana Lange, Jarmila Ptáčková, Marion Wettstein und Mareike Wulff (eds.) Crossing Boundaries. Tibetan Studies Unlimited. Prague: Academia Publishing House.

2021 Review of Chetan Singh, Himalayan Histories (SUNY Press). European Bulletin of Himalayan Research 56.

Forthcoming. Transculturalism Beyond Dualism: in memory of Rudolph Wagner. ed. Monica Juneja.

2022: „Can migrants be indigenous? Affirmative action, space and belonging in the Andaman Islands.” Modern Asian Studies 56, Special Issue 5 “Multiple Worlds of the Adivasi”. 1489–1514.

2022: “Bringing Subalterns into Speech? Investigating Anarchic Resistance to Hegemonic Modernity” Revista de Antropología y Sociología: Virajes, 24(2). 110–131.

2022: “Bengali Hindu Refugees in the Andaman Islands.”, in: Irudaya Rajan, S. (ed.) Routledge Handbook of Refugees in India. London and New York: Routledge. 545-549

2022: “The Conservation of Anarchy: Ethnographic Reflections on Forest Policies and Resource Use”, in: Energies Beyond the State: Anarchist Political Ecology and the Liberation of Nature, edited by Jennifer Mateer, Simon Springer, Martin Locret-Collet, and Maleea Acker, Vol. 3 of Anarchist Political Ecology, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 143–160.

2021: „Über das Schweigen Sprechen: 100 Jahre Adivasi-Migration auf die Andamanen”, Südasien 1, 2021. 88–89.

2020: "Moral and religious responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in Pakistan”, CoronAsur: Religion and COVID-19, Asia Research Institute: National University of Singapore.

2020: "Patriots in Kala Pani: Writing Subaltern Resistance into the National Memory”, in: Banerjee, Rita (ed.): Cultural Histories of India: Subaltern Spaces, Peripheral Genres, and Alternate Historiography. London/ New York: Routledge. 67–88.

2020: "Speaking about Silence: One Hundred Years of Adivasi Migration to the Andamans”, Fieldsights, Society for Cultural Anthropology (SCA).