Sociocultural Anthropology

Hannah Appel

Associate Professor and Associate Director, Institute on Inequality + Democracy

Research Interests:

The anthropology of transnational capitalism and finance; finance, debt and debtors’ unions; Africa in global capitalism; the economic imagination; anti-capitalist and abolitionist social movements

Subfield:

Sociocultural Anthropology

Contact Information

Email: happel@anthro.ucla.edu
Office: 318E Haines Hall

Andrew Apter

Professor

Research Interests:

West Africa (Yoruba, Nigeria), African Diaspora (Haiti, Dominican Republic, Cuba), history of anthropology, social theory

Subfield:

African History and World History

Contact Information

Email: aapter@history.ucla.edu
Office: 6265 Bunche Hall

Aomar Boum

Professor, Maurice Amado Endowed Chair in Sephardic Studies

Research Interests:

Ethnic and religious minorities; Islam; anthropology of religion, history, youth, and festival; Holocaust; sociology of Morocco; historiography; Morocco; North Africa; sub-Saharan Africa; Middle East

Subfield:

Sociocultural Anthropology

Contact Information

Email: aboum@anthro.ucla.edu
Office: 316B Haines Hall

Research Interests:

Sociocultural anthropology, citizenship and sovereignty, indigeneity and settler colonialism, economy and value, gender, environment, American public culture, Indian gaming; United States, Native North America

Subfield:

Sociocultural Anthropology

Contact Information

Email: jesscatt@anthro.ucla.edu
Office: 397 Haines Hall

Jason De León

Professor

Research Interests:

Violence; materiality; Latino migration; forensic science; archaeology of the contemporary; photoethnography

Subfield:

Archaeology and Sociocultural Anthropology

Contact Information

Email: jdeleon@ucla.edu
Office: 364 Haines Hall

Alan Page Fiske

Professor

Research Interests:

Psychological anthropology, social theory, social relationships, social/moral emotions, methodology; Africa

Subfield:

Psychological and Sociocultural Anthropology

Contact Information

Email: afiske@ucla.edu
Office: 308 Haines Hall

Akhil Gupta

Professor

Research Interests:

Ethnography of information technology, the state and development, anthropology of food, environmental anthropology, space and place, history of anthropology, applied anthropology; India and South Asia

Subfield:

Sociocultural Anthropology

Contact Information

Email: akgupta@anthro.ucla.edu
Office: 324A Haines Hall

Laurie Kain Hart

Professor & Director of Center for European and Russian Studies

Research Interests:

Civil war, violence, segregation, borders; urban anthropology; space, architecture, art, material and visual culture; medical and psychoanalytic anthropology; ethnicity and religion; kinship, gender and social theory; Greece, circum-Mediterranean area, inner-city US

Subfield:

Sociocultural Anthropology

Contact Information

Email: lkainhart@ucla.edu
Office: 307 Haines Hall

Research Interests:

Science and technology studies, specifically internet culture and history; intellectual property; the public sphere; free and open source software; public domains; commons; authorship and ownership; the history and philosophy of science and technology in the US, Europe and India

Subfield:

Sociocultural Anthropology

Contact Information

Email: ckelty@socgen.ucla.edu
Office: 3318 Life Sciences Bldg (LSB)

Nancy E. Levine

Professor

Research Interests:

Family and marriage; multi-species anthropology; pastoralism, sedenterization, and resettlement; political economy, development, and social change, gender; Himalayas, Tibet and Central Asia

Subfield:

Sociocultural Anthropology

Contact Information

Email: nelevine@anthro.ucla.edu
Office: 395 Haines Hall

Research Interests:

Digital media studies, Big Data, IT, algorithms in social life; “Virtual” Anthropology; Theories of Affect; Film and Television Studies; Feminist Anthropology and Ethnography; Postcolonial and Women of Color feminism; Queer of Color Critique. South Asian America, South Asia

Subfield:

Sociocultural Anthropology

Contact Information

Email: mankekar@ucla.edu
Office: 325 Haines Hall

Kyeyoung Park 박계영

Professor, Korea Times-Hankook Ilbo Endowed Chair in Korean-American Studies

Research Interests:

Urban anthropology; Inequality (e.g., race, class, and gender); identity; migration/diaspora; transnational and global processes; social change and social movement; critical and multicultural theory; Korean/Asian American Community; Korean/Asian Diaspora; Koreans/Asians in Latin America

Subfield:

Sociocultural Anthropology

Contact Information

Email: kpark@anthro.ucla.edu
Office: 383 Haines Hall

Jemima Pierre

Professor

Research Interests:

Race/racial formation; race and political economy; cultural politics of decolonization in Africa; history and theory of anthropology; African diaspora studies and theory

Subfield:

Sociocultural Anthropology

Contact Information

Email: pierrej@ucla.edu
Office: 7246 Bunche Hall

David Shorter

Professor

Subfield:

Sociocultural Anthropology

Contact Information

Email: shorter@ucla.edu
Office: 130F Kaufman Hall

Susan Slyomovics

Distinguished Professor

Research Interests:

Gender; human rights; folklore and material culture; visual anthropology; Middle East and North Africa

Subfield:

Sociocultural Anthropology

Contact Information

Email: ssly@anthro.ucla.edu
Office: 312 Haines Hall

Shannon Speed

Professor & Director of American Indian Studies Center

Research Interests:

Legal anthropology; indigenous rights; human rights; indigenous migration; gender; neoliberalism, race and ethnicity; sovereignty/autonomy; activist research methodologies

Subfield:

Sociocultural Anthropology

Contact Information

Email: sspeed@aisc.ucla.edu
Office: 3220A Campbell Hall

Tim Taylor

Professor

Research Interests:

Cultural production in the US; cultural industries in the US; consumer culture in the US; globalization of popular culture (especially music); anthropology of media; anthropology of capitalism; neoliberal capitalism; economy and value

Subfield:

Sociocultural Anthropology

Contact Information

Email: tdtaylor@ucla.edu
Office: 2520 Schoenberg Music Building

Bharat Venkat

Associate Professor

Research Interests:

Science, Medicine, and the Environment; Climate Change; Race; Design; Historical Anthropology; South Asia

Subfield:

Sociocultural and Medical Anthropology

Contact Information

Email: bvenkat@ucla.edu

Yunxiang Yan 阎云翔

Professor & Director of Center for Chinese Studies

Research Interests:

Social change and development, family and kinship, cultural globalization, morality, the individual and individualization

Subfield:

Sociocultural Anthropology

Contact Information

Email: yan@anthro.ucla.edu
Office: 366 Haines Hall