Patrice Ladwig is studying the influence of economic modernisation on Buddhist rites of passage in urban Laos.  By focusing on funerals and ordinations into monastic life, he explores how the ritual and moral economy that connects monasteries and laypeople has been affected by economic growth, and how increasing wealth, but also social inequalities are expressed and negotiated in rituals.

 

Johannes Lenhard is working towards an anthropology of the international venture capital industry with field research in London, Berlin, New York, San Francisco and Hong Kong. The focus of his project will be on the values and ethics behind the investors’ decisions: Why do VCs support certain startups – for instance Uber, AirBnB and Transferwise – and not others? What kind of a (better) future do investors want to create?

Anna-Riikka Kauppinen is studying the emergence of new banks led by Ghanaian capital owners in Accra. With a focus on networks of institutional and personal exchange between banks and Charismatic Pentecostal churches, which have become major focal points of urban life in West Africa, the project will generate novel approaches to the study of African capitalism.

Patrick McKearney is developing a comparative anthropology of cognitive disability through fieldwork on Christian NGOs that support these individuals in situations of economic change and development. He will focus on the strategies these organisations develop as they seek to change the role these individuals play in social life, and the practical consequences their ethical projects have on the lives of some of the most dependent in different social settings.

Samuel Williams will study the social and economic significance of gold in Turkey over recent decades of market-driven development. Working closely with Turkish goldsmiths in Istanbul and London who help intermediate the scrap gold trade through Turkey between Europe and the Middle East, he will investigate the range of families, businesses, and other organisations that draw on this gold and why it is of value to them.

Rachel E. Smith will conduct research in Vanuatu on moral and ritual economies in contexts of social change, particularly in the context of the production of kava (a narcotic beverage) for the domestic and a burgeoning export market. She will focus on how ethical, ritual and spiritual practices and values mediate social and economic change.