Professor James Staples
Professor - Anthropology

Summary

After completing a first degree in anthropology in 1990 I worked for nearly ten years as a journalist before my ongoing fascination with South India drew me back to SOAS, University of London, to undertake a PhD. Thanks to ESRC and British Academy Fellowships I was able to stay on there for four years after completion as a post-doctoral fellow, broadening out my initial research on the social consequences of leprosy to consider how attitudes towards negatively construed bodily differences in India are shaped by – and shape – ideas about what constitutes human completeness. A further 16-months’ fieldwork in Hyderabad examined how the category of disability is constituted in multiple ways, and how it is experienced by disabled people in their day-to-day interactions. I joined Brunel as a lecturer in January 2007, returning regularly to my original field site to pursue new research on various topics, including food and social mobility, and suicide.

Qualifications:

• PhD Social Anthropology (SOAS, London) 2003
• BA (Hons) Social Anthropology (SOAS, London) 1990
• PG Cert (Brunel) 2008

Responsibility

Divisional Senior Tutor, REF co-ordinator, Director of South Asia Studies Research Group, Deputy Divisional Lead