This paper revisits the intersections of anthropology and autobiography to argue for the significance of boundaries, reflexivity, and heterogeneity as analytic prisms in ethnography. Judith Okely’s work showed how gendered practices materialise social distinctions and how anthropological knowledge is inseparable from autobiography, which she argued for as a methodological resource. This presentation extends these insights through ethnographic research with Roma communities, where everyday engagements with kinship, healthcare, and education emerge as sites of creativity and agency in which people reshape obligations, reconfigure identities, and imagine alternative possibilities for social reproduction.
Introduced by Anthony Howarth
Departmental Seminar Series Michaelmas Term 2025
3pm, Fridays of Weeks 1, 3-8.
Nissan Lecture Theatre, St Antony's College (except for Week 6).
Convened by Madeleine Reeves, Zuzanna Olszewska and Alice Millington
Week 2 is replaced by the Marett Memorial Lecture delivered by Professor Laura Bear
