Dr Andrew Irving - personal details
Role: Director: Granada Centre of Visual Anthropology
Arthur Lewis Building-2.055
School of Social Sciences
The University of Manchester
Regional specialisations East Africa (inc Kampala, Uganda) and New York City.
Topical interests Death; Illness and Medical Anthropology; HIV/AIDS; Interior Dialogue, Memory and Imagination; Visual, Sensory and Bodily Perception; The Anthropology of Time; Art, Performance and Aesthetics; Experimental Methods and Collaborative Anthropology; Existential and Phenomenological Anthropology; Urban Anthropology and Spatial Perception.
See here for further information of my current work in Visual and Sensory Anthropology www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/disciplines/socialanthropology/visualanthropology/projects/teachingstaff/irving/
New York City: I have recently been working on an experimental art/anthropology research project supported by a grant from the Wenner Gren Foundation and the ESRC entitled "New York Stories". The aim of "New York Stories" is to research and represent how different modes of inner expression--including interior dialogues, unarticulated moods, imaginative lifeworlds and emotional reverie--constitute peoples lived experience of urban life and mediate social-cultural spaces but remain hidden beneath the surface of public activities.
For a recent write up about this research in Scientific American see here http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/brainwaves/2013/04/29/mrs-dalloway-in-new-york-documenting-how-people-talk-to-themselves-in-their-heads/
Africa: I am currently developing British Academy and methods@manchester funded research project in Kampala, Uganda under the collective theme of Rethinking Media/Reclaiming Personhood. The aim is to consider how socially marginalised persons who through death, disease or other dislocating experiences can re-establish social and existential continuity and become included in community and society through different kinds of media practices. The projects use visual and other sensory media and collaborative forms of self-representation to address questions of research, representation, ethics and empowerment and set up a different kind of social life.
PhD supervision I welcome PhD projects across a broad range of anthropological themes, especially those that place special emphasis on the following areas: Death; Illness and Medical Anthropology; HIV/AIDS; Interior Dialogue, Memory and Imagination; Visual, Sensory and Bodily Perception; The Anthropology of Time; Art, Performance and Aesthetics; Experimental Methods and Collaborative Anthropology; Existential and Phenomenological Anthropology; Urban Anthropology.