Emma Crewe

Today we started the installation of Learning from South Omo at @soasgallery.bsky.social. Opens 14 October 2025 to 13 December 2025 www.soas.ac.uk/about/event/... @soasanthro.bsky.social

Bhrigupati Singh and Neil Armstrong. I hope you can join.

📌What does it mean to ‘return’?

Join the SOAS Centre for Migration & Diaspora Studies for a two-day workshop on the concept and practices of return.

📅 17 Oct, 5:30pm, DLT, SOAS
📅 18 Oct, 1pm, SOAS Bar

🔗 Details & registration: shorturl.at/ScRNW
@naomihossain.bsky.social @terminalias.bsky.social

📣Our weekly departmental research seminar lineup is now live!

This year we are running the series with our own Centre for Mental Health Research in Action (CAMHRA).

Talks will invite us to think in new ways about forms of life, distress, wellbeing and personhood.

Wednesdays 3-5pm, RB01, SOAS.

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/r... If interested in physics, time, space, threat of war, ethics…. then have a listen 👇

This is an amazing line up for our @soasanthro.bsky.social dept research seminar series, Wed 3-5pm, organised by Bhrigu Singh and Neil Armstrong.

YouTube video by SOAS University of London Learning from South Omo: Exhibition at Gabre Kristos Desta Centre, July 2025

Learning from South Omo - exhibition at the Gabre Kristos Desta Centre, Addis Ababa youtu.be/00fuNry4sV8?... @soasuni.bsky.social @soasanthro.bsky.social

This is about how #Txlege departs from common perception. Bipartisan lawmaking thrives but is under threat. Prof Taylor-Robinson (a pol sci) and I (an anthropologist) offer a unique take. @scottbraddock.bsky.social won’t be surprised, cos his knowledge runs very deep, but others might be. Free👇

Logo of "State Politics & Policy Quarterly" next to a stylized map of US states.

#OpenAccess from State Politics & Policy Quarterly -

Cooperation in Polarized Legislatures: Learning from the Case of the Texas State House of Representatives - https://cup.org/46IRNJ7

- @emmacrewe.bsky.social & Michelle M. Taylor-Robinson

#FirstView

Are we losing the capacity to collaborate in political world? Probably. But not so in academic world. See here for three new articles about research collaborations in Texas, Ethiopia and Brazil: www.emmacrewe.com

Special Report: Will the AI revolution end politics as we know it? Podcast Episode · The News Agents · 19/09/2025 · 1h

Lewis Goodall is doing here what journalists should, asking us (and esp politicians) to think about what’s coming down the track. This is now urgent: the regulation of AI podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

A huge thank you to Professor Sir John Curtice for delivering last night’s Michael Ryle Lecture on the theme of “Can Britain’s Two Party System Survive?” 👏

Being a university dept manager is fun when you feel appreciated. My reply to a brilliant but risky idea 👇

Vigil for Palestinian journalists killed by Israel in Gaza – featuring speech by Wael Al-Dahdouh Over 240 candles will be lit - each one honouring a Palestinian journalist killed in the Gaza genocide

Amnesty International UK Vigil for Palestinian journalists killed by Israel in Gaza – speech by Wael Al-Dahdouh on Wednesday 10th September 2025 at 5.30 (Wael will be speaking at 6pm for ten minutes) WHERE: Richmond House (opposite Downing St), Whitehall, London
www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releas...

The NACCH 2025 International Academic Conference on Newah Cultural Heritage convenes 6 Sept (online) & 13–14 Sept (in person). With 31 papers from 18 countries, scholars, community leaders and activists will examine continuity, change & global significance of Newah culture. More info here: nacch.org

Award-winning screenwriter and story
consultant James Moran offers an innovative
five-session course at @soasanthro.bsky.social, drawing on exceptional storytelling such as Pixar animation, Iranian
cinema, and Chekhov. I have heard amazing things about James and his courses so really recommend this.

This September, I'll be running a short course on creative ethnographic writing at SOAS. We'll learn narrative techniques from HBO dramas, international cinema and Russian literature! Sign up & details: academicstorytelling.substack.com/p/new-short-... @soasanthro.bsky.social @soasuni.bsky.social

Two fully funded PhDs with me at SOAS. Within my ERC project; one researching in Paris, the other in Düsseldorf. Exploring the impact of Chinese capital on European urban space, the cultural industries, and social media. More info here:

drive.google.com/file/d/12srA...

Deadline is 21 July.

Exciting job as a Programme Manager working for the wonderful Marloes Janson (in SOAS anthro dept) on a fab new research programme about the nexus between religion and sport in 4 African countries. Should have experience of partnerships in Africa: vacancies.soas.ac.uk/job/740734

Award-winning screenwriter and story
consultant James Moran offers an innovative
five-session course at @soasanthro.bsky.social, drawing on exceptional storytelling such as Pixar animation, Iranian
cinema, and Chekhov. I have heard amazing things about James and his courses so really recommend this.

We at @instituteforgovernment.org.uk have coordinated a letter in @thetimes.com today in which numerous individuals and organisations call on the government to withdraw its mistaken rules which are having a serious chilling effect on civil servants speaking in public…

Call for Papers: What is a Parliament? Are parliaments institutions, organisations, corporations or something else? Does it make sense to ask the question Who is Parliament? or should parliaments always be considered a thing or set of relations of some kind? This interdisciplinary one-day workshop will consider such questions from all points of view, from the metaphysical to the political, historical, legal and anthropological, as well as how our different understandings of parliaments affect the way we study, critique and run them. We welcome papers operating at all levels of abstraction and those concerned with concrete cases. Our aim is for the workshop to include scholars working in different academic disciplines, from different intellectual traditions, and who are at all career stages from PhD onwards. If you are interested in presenting a paper, please send a title and abstract of no more than 250 words to Stephen Holden Bates (s.r.bates@bham.ac.uk) by 4th July 2025. The workshop will be held on Friday 19th September in Birkbeck’s Keynes Library (46 Gordon Square, London). It is being co-convened by Stephen Holden Bates (University of Birmingham), Paul Seaward (History of Parliament Trust) and Ben Worthy (Birkbeck, University of London) and co-sponsored by the Department of Politics at Birkbeck, the Department of Political Science & International Studies at the University of Birmingham and PSA Parliaments. The workshop will be free, and refreshments and lunch will be provided. Early career researchers who have a paper accepted will be able to apply for funding from PSA Parliaments to cover some or all travel expenses on a case-by-case basis.

📢📢📢 CfP: What is a Parliament?

Interdisciplinary workshop on 19th September 2025 in London.

Full details below.

Kindly sponsored by Birkbeck, the University of Birmingham and @psa-parliaments.bsky.social

Please apply and/or spread the word!

SOAS colleague Yair Wallach gives us hope and reliable accounts in an increasingly bleak world. Follow him, if you don’t already, and you’ll see what I mean.

From @ihabhassan.bsky.social (on X). Red are zones marked for evacuation. 2+ m people are supposed to fit into the green zones.
It sends shivers down my spine.

How poor we in the UK - incl London I say as a Londoner - would be without immigrants. Of course almost everyone in the UK was an immigrant if you go back a long way. A beautifully written piece 👇

Immigration is not too high in the UK. Alienation, loneliness, homelessness and poverty are too high. So let’s work on those, prioritising those most in need. How on earth did we allow this extremely widely held research & ethics-based logic to become debased?

Watched last night - it’s about villages in the West Bank being driven out. It will stay with me for a long time. Highly recommended.

Incredible inaugural lecture by Bhrigupati Singh. Erudite, generous, captivating. He represented our dept so beautifully ❤️

Article just published on Parliament’s strategic ignorance about transatlantic trafficking and enslavement of Africans & reparations. Time to apologise and discuss the debt we owe: brill.com/view/journal...

Invaluable resource 👇