Centre for South Asian Studies

Profile

I am an Emeritus Professor in the School of Social and Political Science, where I was previously Professor of Social Anthropology in Practice, and served as  Head of School immediately prior to my retirement. 

After an early career in chemical physics, I retrained as an anthropologist in the mid-1970s. My principal overseas field research was in Tamil Nadu, South India, though I also have long experience of Sri Lanka, as a physical chemistry lecturer and later a human rights researcher. I carried out much shorter pieces of work in other parts of South and Southeast Asia on behalf of the UK's Department for International Development (DfID). I have also done substantial recent research in the UK, on the administrative and legal processes involved in claiming asylum.

My initial field research in South India focused on family and kinship, especially the life-cycle ceremonies surrounding birth, puberty, marriage, and death. Subsequent research in a Hindu temple was concerned with the ceremonial economy linking gods, priests and worshippers, as well as daily and festival worship.

In the 1990s I acted as a senior consultant for ODA/DfID, convening a team of Edinburgh anthropologists providing advice on NGO-implemented community development projects. I was also involved in policy-related work for DfID itself. 

From 1994 onwards I  frequently acted as an expert witness in asylum appeal cases involving Sri Lankans – mainly in the UK, but also in Canada, the USA, and several European countries. In 2003, 2006, and 2010, I made brief fact-finding visits to Sri Lanka, together with AJ Paterson,  a leading immigration solicitor, to assess the human rights situation there, producing reports for use as evidence in asylum claims.

In 2000/01 I carried out ESRC-funded research into uses of expert evidence in the British asylum courts, and subsequent AHRC-funded research on the asylum process in France and the UK, done in collaboration with Dr Robert Gibb, is described below.

In June 2017, with Dr Daniela Berti (Centre d'Etudes Himalayennes, CNRS, Paris), I co-hosted a workshop in Edinburgh, funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, entitled ‘Taking Nature To The Courtroom. Development Projects, Protected Areas And Religious Reform In South Asia’. The workshop focused on recent and pending litigation on these issues in South Asian courts.

I am now embarking on a project researching the legal status of the Scottish wild cat, a protected species yet one that has probably not existed in genetically 'pure' form for several millenia, thanks to interbreeding with feral domestic cats. This work is linked to the RULNAT programme (Ruling on Nature: Animals and the Environment before the Court), funded by the French National Agency for Research (ANR) and managed by CNRS. I am also the Independent Ethics Adviser to the VULNER programme (Vulnerabilities under the Global Protection Régime: How does the Law Assess, Address, Shape and Produce the Vulnerabilities of Protection Seekers?) an Horizon 2020 programme hosted by the Law and Anthropology Department at the Max Planck Institute, Halle.

AHRC Research Project

I collaborated with Dr Robert Gibb of Glasgow University in a project funded under the Diasporas, Migration and Identities (DMI) Programme of the Arts & Humanities Research Council, entitled The Conversion of Asylum Applicants' Narratives into Legal Discourses in the UK and France: a Comparative Study of Problems of Cultural Translation. One highlight of the project was a workshop, held in Edinburgh in March 2009, that brought together judges, lawyers, interpreters, senior executives of NGOs, and judicial and ministerial officials from both countries. They described their activities to one another, and discussed the legal, bureaucratic, and financial problems involved in securing fair asylum decisions in both countries.