Some of you more regular readers may have noticed that we’ve been posting less at material world blog of late. When Danny Miller and I started the blog in 2006 the blog was a way for me to keep my connection to the vibrant material culture group in the Anthropology Department at UCL where I had been a doctoral student as well as to connect UCL to the broader interest in material culture developing in the US. Since 2006 we have had a series of dedicated editors and editors-at-large, based all over the place, who have regularly provided content ranging from exhibition and book reviews through to notes from the field and good links. One of the things I’ve liked most about the site is that is its commitment to many voices and the space it has given to students and to scholars whose first language is not English to present their ideas. In turn, Material Culture is no longer a small side field but a recognized and important part of anthropology, history, sociology, art history, geography, and so on, with an established presence in journals, websites and of course, other blogs.
My own move back to UCL (in 2012) coupled by the massive proliferation of web based publishing and blogging activities has pulled the time and commitments of our editors into many different areas so we are reorganising the blog to bring in some new energy, predominantly through graduate students currently at UCL.
The blog will showcase current thinking taking place within the UCL Department of Anthropology in what we now call, in a typically unruly and expansive way, the “Material, Visual, and Digital Culture” section. UCL students (from undergraduate through to PhD) will be editors and contributors , alongside faculty.
We have always been a portal for current affairs, conferences, announcements and so forth. This side of the blog will continue and will be redesigned so as to make it easier to access. Our Occasional Paper Series – a more “formal” effort at online publishing – will continue. Anyone interested in pushing the boundaries of their representational output please do get in touch.
Finally – there will always be space for contributions from anyone who wants to seriously engage with the comparative, interdisciplinary, and ethnographic understanding of the material world. Please check the how to contribute bar to see how to send in contact.
We would like to thank our outgoing editorial team: Heather Horst, Aaron Glass, Patrick Laviolette, and Fernando Dominguez Rubio.
Matt Hockenberry remains on board as our technical advisor and design guru (with a few material culture tricks up his sleeve too)
And here is the new editorial team:
- Jo Aiken, Phd Student
- Rosalie Allain, PhD Student
- Josh Burraway, PhD Student, his project focuses on the politics of intoxication among London’s homeless population
- Pauline Destree, PhD Student
- Aeron O’Connor, PhD Student
- Victor Buchli, Reader in Material Culture
- Ludovic Coupaye, Lecturer in Material Culture
- Adam Drazin, Lecturer in Material Culture and Design Anthropology
- Haidy Geismar, Reader in Anthropology
- Susanne Küchler, Professor of Material Culture
- Hannah Knox, Lecturer in Material Culture and Digital Anthropology
- Daniel Miller, Professor of Material Culture
- Chris Pinney, Professor of Anthropology and Visual Culture
- Chris Tilley, Professor of Anthropology and Archaeology
- Timothy Carroll
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