Friday 17 May
15.00-16.00

Informal online meeting: Yael Dansac will be sharing research, please come and join the conversation. Zoom link will be sent via the network mailing list.

Embodying the Gods: The Re-enactment of Myth in a Scottish Pagan Festival

Abstract:
Storytelling is an important element of Pagan rituals because it allows the participants to reconnect, bodily, emotionally and spirituality, with past and present. In this presentation, I draw on ethnographic data collected during the Samhuinn Festival taking place on 31st October in Edinburgh. This event marks the changing of seasons, gathers thousands of people, and brings ancient Celtic stories alive with a modern twist. The festival revolves around the staging and re-enactment of the epic battle between two characters, the Summer and Winter Kings. Both are accompanied by their respective crews of otherworldly creatures inspired in local folklore: fairies, beasties, and morrigans, among others. The re-enactment of this myth becomes a multi-sensory experience for both the participants and the audience, highlighting the role of storytelling in the elaboration of individual and collective spiritual experiences.

Friday 14 June
(15.00-17.00 GMT, 16.00-18.00 CET)

This workshop between EASA networks EnviroAnt and NAoH explores collaborative possibilities of conversations between our research questions and approaches. Our guiding theme is temporalities. We consider the differences and synergies on how we engage with imaginaries and intersections of the present, the future and the past? What do we need to consider in our relations to the present and future as well as the past?

Our preliminary questions include:

• What are the temporal imaginaries inherent in conservation? Do these vary between nature and heritage conservation?
• How nonhuman actors complicate the idea of “history”? Or, how might historical perspectives complicate the nonhuman?

We are delighted to host the following speakers to kick off this discussion:

• Lanoi Maloiy, (University of Nairobi & Durham University, honorary fellow)
• Mario Krämer (Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne)
• Katarzyna Puzon (Humboldt University of Berlin)

Click here for further details >>

Friday 12 April

This online roundtable with Jeremy Walton (University of Rijeka) and David Henig (University of Utrecht) and Zeynep Oğuz Kursar (Harvard, University of Zagreb) was the second in our NAoH 2024 seminar series. The NAoH series aims to gather anthropologists (and beyond) to present and discuss their takes on history in different ways. This event addressed "Conversations" and explored transdisciplinary dimensions of historical anthropological work between:

• Jeremy Walton (University of Rijeka)
• David Henig (University of Utrecht)
• Zeynep Oğuz Kursar (Harvard, University of Zagreb)

Friday 26 January

The Politics of Scale: Perspectives from and on Anthropology of History

Pamela Ballinger (University of Michigan), Dominique Santos (Rhodes University), Georgeta Stoica and Marta Gentilucci (CUFR Mayotte) and Alice Elliot (Goldsmiths)

The Roundtable will unfold in a dialogical, research-experiential, and collaborative manner. Four scholars are invited to open up the space of exchange by sharing research experiences and ethnographic examples on how and why they scale history in particular ways; what this opens up and limits; and which potential pitfalls emerge.

Friday 8 December

Informal online meeting

Network member Malte Gembus will share some research thoughts.
Yetu - Nanik - Satajtoj: Young People and their engagement with Past, Present and Future in the Guatemalan diaspora.

Thursday 30 November

Book launch and Roundtable conversation (online) Weaving Europe, Crafting the Museum

Magdalena Buchczyk (Magdalena Buchczyk (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) in conversation with Aimee Joyce (St Andrews) and Magdalena Zych (Seweryn Udziela Ethnographic Museum, Kraków)

Friday 13 October
15.00-16.30 BST

Sultan Doughan (Goldsmiths) shares her research: 'What's secularism got to do with it? On history as a political resource of the present'.

Informal presentation (10-15 minutes) with plenty time for questions and discussions, as well as catching up and sharing network news and plans.

Friday 26 May 2023
16.00-18.00 BST

Online Book Launch. Monumental Names

Friday May 19 2023
15.00 GMT/London

Informal meeting

Our regular informal meetings offer space to be sociable, as well as discuss ideas about future plans and network projects.

The speakers will be the network founders, Giovanna Parmigiani (Harvard Divinity School) and Helen Cornish (Goldsmiths) - who will share some aspects of their research on magic, witchcraft, histories and historicities.

Thursday 11 May
15.00-17.30 BST

NAoH workshop. What makes history more public than anthropology?

In What Makes History More Public than Anthropology? NAoH, the EASA Network for an Anthropology of History explores intersections between an anthropology of history, public anthropologies and public histories.
This first of three workshops (2023-2024) asks

• What might it mean to consider an anthropology of history in the public domain? Is this an engaged or applied model?
• Public histories often favour narratological approaches to the past, does an anthropological approach to public history challenge theoretical conventions?
• Do anthropological theories and ethnographic methods undermine public histories? Or do these offer insights when navigating difficult or contested accounts?
  Organised by Helen Cornish (Goldsmiths) & Giovanna Parmigiani (Harvard) NAoH Convenors

Contributors (abstracts available through link)

• Carol Balthazar (UCL)
• Dominic Bryan (Queens University Belfast)
• Julia Binter (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin)
• Galina Oustinova-Stjepanovic (Glasgow)
• Elaine McIlwraith (Western University, Canada)

Friday March 24 2023
15.00 GMT/London

Informal meeting

This informal meeting will give us time to discuss any thoughts or ideas about future plans and network projects.
Also, Dom Bryan (Queens University, Belfast) will share some thoughts about his research.

Friday 27 January 2023
15.00 GMT
Informal meeting with speakers on zoom (invite by NAoH Mailing List)

• Katarzyna Puzon (Institue for Advanced Studies global dis:connect, Ludwig Maximillian University of Munich): 'Sound Archives and Their Entangled Legacies'
• Nina ter Laan (University of Cologne, University of Siegen): 'Re-membering the Rif through Sound and Song: (Post)-colonial pasts and musical practices among Riffians between Morocco and The Netherlands'