Department of Anthropology
School of Social Science
University of Aberdeen
Aberdeen
AB24 3QY
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)1224 274354
james.leach(AT)abdn.ac.uk
I studied Social Anthropology at Manchester University (B.Soc.Sci 1992, PhD 1997), and then spent nine years on Research and teaching Fellowships at Cambridge University in the Dept. of Anthropology, Darwin College, and Kings College). I am currently External Examiner for the BA in Anthropology at SOAS, University of London.
A fascination with how persons and things come into being – how they are constituted in processes that Anthropology is uniquely positioned to describe - has spurred an interest in design taken broadly as the space in which people collaborate and negotiate different interests and capacities. I am interested to explore how anthropological methods and concepts can contribute to others’ endeavours, and how both imagined and unexpected outcomes emerge. See: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/anthropology/postgrad/MScdesignanthropology.php
Postgraduate Research Students:
Candice Roze. Rural Vanuatu: changing perceptions of place, forest and kinship.
Ekaterina Bartik: Urban Russia: Marriage migration and Introduction Agencies
Nail Farkhatdinov: Audience perception in a Russian Contemporary Art Gallery.
Completed Postgraduate Research Students:
Kathryn Harriman. An Argument of Images Through a Symbolist Lens: Craft Practices in North East Scotland. Aberdeen 2011.
Bernhard Krieger (2009) 'The production of free software: an ethnographic enquiry into a new social practice'
Katharina Schneider (2008) 'Movements and social relations among Pororan Islanders, Bougainville, Papua New Guinea'.
Alice Street (2008) 'Diagnosing Difference: Medical agency and the politics of recognition in a Papua New Guinean hospital'. Cambridge 2009
Current and Past Postgraduate Taught Courses
Anthropological Approaches to Intellectual Property Law. (Central European University)
‘The Anthropology of Knowledge’. (University of Heidelberg, Institute for Ethnology)
Current Undergraduate Courses:
Introduction to Anthropology: Questions of Diversity. (Level 1).
Anthropology of Knowledge: Critical Studies of Innovation, Production and Value. (Level 4).
Previous Undergraduate Courses:
‘Contemporary Issues in Social Anthropology’ (Level 2: Theory)
‘Marriage and Exchange’ (Level 2 and 3).
‘Political Economy’ (Level 3).
‘Cognition, Meaning and Rationality’ (Level 3).
‘Ethnographic Region: The Pacific’ (Level 3 and 4).
‘Writing Anthropology’ (Level 3).
