Royal Anthropological Institute Second Annual Postgraduate Conference

13th September 2012

School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent (Canterbury)

This was the second postgraduate conference sponsored by the RAI. Its intention was to provide insight into the depth and breadth of anthropological research currently being conducted by research students throughout the UK.

Keynote Speakers

Dr. João de Pina-Cabral will be closed the event by addressing the chosen theme for this year’s postgraduate conference: ‘anthropological frontiers and migrations’. Dr. Pina-Cabral has worked extensively on the notions of kinship and family in Southern Europe and has greatly contributed to our understandings of ethnicity and colonial power through his research in Mozambique, Macao and Brazil. His book: “Sons of Adam, Daughters of Eve: the peasant worldview of the Alto Minho (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1986; D. Quixote, Lisbon, 1989)” is considered to be a keystone text in modern studies of the Mediterranean.

Professor Roy Ellen delivered the opening keynote speech, emphasising the crucial role played by young PhD researchers in expanding the discipline’s theoretical and empirical focus. Through intensive anthropological research in eastern Indonesia and his holistic theoretical approach, Professor Roy Ellen has significantly influenced many fields in social and cultural anthropology. Professor Roy Ellen’s extensive list of work has singlehandedly shaped our understanding of humanity’s relationship with its environment and, as an active researcher, is a leading figure in Ethnobotany and Environmental Anthropology.

Student Papers

Please click on the title to see an abstract of the paper.

Michael Costello – Law as adjunct to Custom in Abkhazia
Ugo D’Ambrosio – Ngäbe explanations of agroculinary transitions in southern Conte-Burica, Costa Rica
Malcolm Franklin – Concepts of displacement and home: seeking asylum and belonging amongst the host community of Belfast, Northern Ireland
Farhana Hoque – The Journey of Cultural Identity in the Chittagong Hill Tracts: a Transgenerational Approach
Bryn Trevelyan James – The Spirit of the Plant’: Exotic Ethnopharmacopeia Among Traditional Healers in Madina, Accra
Rebecca Lynch – Cosmologies of Uncertainty: Spirits, Sickness and Agency in a Trinidadian Village
Daniel A. Mullins – Literacy and Large Group Living
Jenna Murray de López – Conflict and Reproductive Health in Chiapas, Mexico: Disappearing the Midwife
Hannah Parathian – Being Tikuna in a Contemporary World: An ethnoecological account of human- wildlife interactions in the Colombian Amazon
Lucia Rubinelli – Law and Politics: a tale from Iceland
Rachel Scicluna – The Kitchen is ‘good to think with’: power, resistance and uncertainty

The Conference organizers,
Brian Campbell
Maria Paz-Peirano
Carin Tunaker
Caroline Bennet
Aston-Martin Vicary