Michael Lambek

Info coming soon

Sandra Bamford

Info coming soon

Girish Daswani

Girish Daswani is a Social Anthropologist with a special interest in Ghana, the anthropology of religion, diaspora and transnationalism. He received his PhD from the London School of Economics in 2007. Dr. Daswani conducted multi-sited research with members of a Ghanaian Pentecostal church in southern Ghana and London (U.K.). In his work he looks at how Pentecostalism – its religious intermediaries, ideologies, and rituals – subjectively frame and facilitate church members' ideas of transformation, personhood, and aspirations for overseas travel. He looked at 'transformation' as a central theme in Pentecostal Christianity, as a moral framework for understanding individual and social change. Transformation raises questions of continuity and discontinuity with the past, as expressed in concerns over 'culture' and identity, and the ways in which Pentecostal subjects become active agents in the world. While his specific interest is on different forms of Pentecostal expression in Ghana, and the migratory and missionary movement of members of the Church of Pentecost (CoP) from Ghana to London, he has also started research on a traditional shrine in Kumasi, Ghana, its relationship to Pentecostalism, and its transnational networks in Europe and North America.

Donna Young

Donna Young is a social-cultural anthropologist who began her journey in anthropology as a cook for transient railroaders on the CPR, which led to her MA thesis, "The Right Way, the Wrong Way, and the Railway." (UNB) She has maintained an interest in the anthropology of work and the politics of gender and class. Her doctoral work focused on the cultural constructions of memory and the lives of impoverished women in Atlantic Canada. (UT) She has also co-edited a book on academic practices, in which anthropologists were asked to turn their ethnographic gaze upon the institutions that had shaped them as scholars. Currently she is working in East and West Jerusalem where she is examining the ethics and practices of pilgrimage to the Holy Lands.

Maggie Cummings

Research Interests and Work in Progress
Transforming Masculinities in Vanuatu: This SSHRC-funded research project is an exploration of gender, identity and subjectivity as they emerge in two increasingly significant realms of labour and livelihood: Vanuatu's rapidly-expanding tourism industry and New Zealand's newly-launched Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) program. I am interested in the ways in which the body of the long-distance runner is considered an embodiment of virtue, and how such bodies symbolically "harnessed" by the corporate economy through organized running events that raise money for various charities.

Citizenship and Suburban Space (a joint project with Girish Daswani and Susannah Bunce): The pedagogical goal of this project is encourage student experiential learning. Students in Anthropology and Cities studies will work under the supervision of a multidisciplinary team of urban planners, anthropologists and local research collaborators to explore intersections of housing, services, identity and belonging for Newcomers in the priority neighbourhood of Kingston/Galloway/Orton Park (Scarborough). The research will address the housing needs and practices of newcomers to KGOP, namely how physical space and ideas of belonging and citizenship are interconnected.

Lena Mortensen

Interests and works in progress: Cultural anthropology, heritage, ethnography of archaeology, cultural tourism, commodification of culture, politics of representation, perspectives on material culture, and cultural policy. I have ongoing research interests in the intersections of heritage politics, cultural tourism, archaeology, and identity-based movements, particularly in Honduras. My book manuscript in progress, "Constructing Copan," traces these themes centering on the monumental attraction of the Copan Archaeological Park, a locus of scientific production, economic development, nationalist politics, and tourist imaginings. I am currently researching the local-level development of new archaeological tourism attractions in Honduras as the product of recent shifts in government policy to engage new categories of citizens in the shaping and promotion of more diverse public histories. I am also co-chair of the Working Group on Cultural Tourism in a multidisciplinary research project investigating "Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage" (funded by the SSHRC MCRI program). for more information on the project and collaborators: http://www.sfu.ca/ipinch/

Alejandro Paz

Interests and work in progress: Linguistic Anthropology, Publics and Media, Diaspora and Transnationalism, Israel and Middle East.Bio: Alejandro Paz (PhD, Anthropology and Linguistics, U of Chicago, 2010) studies language and ethnicity in diasporic and transnational contexts. His first project focuses on non-Jewish, Latin American labour migrants and their children in Israel, considering both language use as a sign of ethnolinguistic identity, as well as the emergence of a public concerned with the rights of undocumented children. Earlier, he wrote about Israeli nationalist-religious settlers who use archaeological tourism to help substantiate their claims for land in East Jerusalem. He places his work on Israel within the broader context of the Middle East. He is broadly interested in pragmatics, linguistic anthropology, diaspora and migration, publics and media.

Chris Krupa