Hearing above the Roar
ByLily HiggittMSc Anthropology, Environment and Development, 2022-23 This reflective piece highlights the ethical and political barriers I encountered whilst researching and co-hosting a UCL A…
Author: anthropolitanblog
The Language of Wind: A multi-sited sensory ethnography of the wind
ByRosalind ProsserMFA Creative Documentary Practice Scholars I plead with you, where are your dictionaries of the wind? — Norman MacCaig, By the graveyard, Luskentyre Region of the Helm…
Third Space: When anthropology meets fiction – an anthropologist at a funeral
ByFelix StephensBSc Global Humanitarian Studies This is a fictional piece about an ethnographer attending the funeral of a famous writer. It explores the power of different mediums, how…
Ode to Chagossian Zistwar
ByChrisyl Wong-Hang-SunMRes Anthropology, 2022-23 Down where the river meets the sea, An old man sits beside me.With his long white beard and skin, a rich Nwar[Black]He begins to share…
Las Barras: An opportunistic portrait of passionate football fans on the streets in Medellín
ByDavid EdgarPhD Anthropology A cacophony of drumming, chanting, and explosions drifts through my window. I grab my camera and run into the street. It’s las barras: fervent football…
Navigating Solidarity: The Plight of the Ukrainian Roma Refugees in Poland
ByIliana SarafianLecturer in Medical Anthropology, UCL&Agnieszka CabanPhD Candidate in Anthropology, University of Warsaw In 2023, we embarked on a research project exploring the experiences o…
Stressed monkeys age faster? The impacts of stress exposures on epigenetic ageing in owl monkeys
ByMichael GirlingMSc Human Evolution and Behaviour, 2023-24 The process of ageing is a universal phenomenon affecting all living organisms and recent research highlights how stress exposures w…
Creative Collective: Re-inventing Empikas — a photo essay
ByGabriella SantiniPhD Anthropology The ban on female circumcision in Kenya has put an end to Empikas — the only rite of passage ceremony for Maasai girls in Siria,…
Shaping Bubbles of Time: Crossing Temporalities Through VHS, DVDs, and Gigabytes
ByDamian Andres SabatiniMA Material and Visual Culture, 2022-23 1998 marked a pivotal moment in the world of cinema, with the iconic sci-fi filmmaker from the 1970s, George Lucas,…
The Wonderful Everyday: An Anthropological Investigation into IKEA Showrooms
ByJess JonesMA Material and Visual Culture, 2022-23 It may or may not be a surprise that this kitchen is not in someone’s home but in an IKEA showroom.…
Toward A Happy Lab: Biology Neophytes’ Adaptation to Research Logic
ByLiang QuiyanMSc Biosocial Medical Anthropology, 2022-23 The complexity of biological life poses a challenge to the study of its mechanisms: in lab contexts, the interpretation requires at le…
The Oxymoron of Sustainable Aviation: Do we really want green solutions?
ByLuna Kvarnstrøm MelgaardMSc Anthropology, Environment, and Development Why is the aviation industry worth talking about? We have all heard how harmful the aviation industry is to the clim…
Introducing Anthropolitan Magazine – Winter 2022/23
ByLewis DalyEditor, Anthropolitan Read the Issue We are delighted to present this special issue of Anthropolitan—UCL Anthropology’s annual departmental magazine—on the theme of Race, Raci…
The tale of the travelling sneaker: From Western Rejects to Nairobi’s Mtumba Hustle
ByGabriella SantiniPhD Anthropology I met Esther, a bit by chance, as I was exploring Nairobi’s streets after a Kiswahili class. Esther is a 24-year-old Kenyan entrepreneur. She owns…
CITES CoP19: Combatting species extinction through wildlife trade regulation
BySonia DhandaPhD Anthropology On 14–25 November 2022, government representatives from over 160 countries convened in Panama City for solutions to the biodiversity crisis and negotiations on w…
Object Project: A Conversation Between Us and Our Future Grandchildren
ByJihai LiBSc Anthropology, 2021-24 This is an assignment of the undergraduate module ‘Introduction to Material and Visual Culture’. The assignment requires each student to choose one of the…
CAUTION! Planetary Boundary Ahead!
BySara MahdiAnthropology, Environment, and Development MSc, 2022-23 I am certain that I am not alone when I think to myself, “Have we really, truly, permanently changed the planet?…
Discovering wellbeing traditions in the Czech Republic
ByJosephine PlattMSc Social and Cultural Anthropology, 2021–2023 A limp, plastic sack is waiting for me on a therapy bed, and I’m being gestured to strip off and climb…
Changing socio-political landscapes surrounding Russia’s war on Ukraine
On 6 June 2022, activists and researchers working in and from the former Soviet sphere met at UCL Anthropology to discuss ways in which Russia’s war on Ukraine…
Anthropolitan | Call for Photographs 2022
Dear students and staff, We are delighted to write with news of a new departmental photography initiative. We warmly invite submissions from all members of the department—students and…
A Tale of Two Olhas: Reframing Ukrainian women’s experiences of war
ByAmandas OngPhD Anthropology Olha K.1 was not happy. For weeks, she had been waiting to apply for a national identification number that would grant Ukrainians like herself full…
CRISPR: Rewriting the story of humanity and evolution through gene-editing
ByTarisha KaushikBSc Anthropology The technology of CRISPR (“clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats”) has revolutionised the world of biology and evolution yet w…
Quarandream With Me: The World After Covid
ByPepe WeischerBSc Anthropology Quarantining, the systematic confinement of the ill, has been in practice for at least a thousand years, but never on the scale seen in 2020,…
Spiritual Aliens, DJ Shamans, and Us: Experiences of liminality and communitas within the psytrance rave
ByIzzy DaviesBSc Anthropology Coming from the Latin limen, meaning ‘threshold’, the anthropological concept of liminality is taken to refer to ambiguous moments or spaces both inside and outside…