Prof Adam Reed

Prof Adam Reed

Professor

Phone
+44 (0)1334 46 2974
Email
ader@st-andrews.ac.uk
Office
Room 56
Location
United Colleges
Office hours
Friday 1pm-2pm in person Monday 4pm-5pm on Teams

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Research areas

I conducted my original research (1994-1995) in a maximum-security prison just outside Port Moresby, the national capital of Papua New Guinea. That work focuses on issues around cultures of incarceration, including attention to colonial & postcolonial governmentality, the politics of vision, money, aesthetics of documents, articulations of loss and exile and popular narratives of nationhood, the city and crime.

More recently (1999-present), I have conducted research in the UK, working with members of a British literary society (fans of a particular novelist) as well as with various groups of London knowledge producers (walking tour guides, Internet journal keepers). Out of these projects come my continuing interests in popular theorizations of the city and urban imaginations, cultures of fiction reading & writing, senses of place, the material culture of books & other artefacts of literary culture, memory, mind and literary subjectivities.

In the last ten years, I have begun a new arm of research: an anthropological study of ethical campaigning in Scotland. This projects looks at the organizational ethics and ethical subjectivation at play in animal welfare campaigning, and is the beginning of a wider project that engages with the anthropology of ethics. This interest, in tandem with my interest in Anthropology and Literature, has recently led me to explore the concept of character, within Anthropology and across disciplines.Ìý

Finally, I have completed a pilot project working with Papua New Guinean migrants to Western Australian. This project looks at skilled labour migration from Papua New Guinea and in particular at the relationship to resource extraction; it focuses on concepts of 'skill', innovations in death ritual and on the influence of Pentecostalism in the migrant expereince.Ìý

PhD supervision

  • HannahÌýFitchett
  • TamikaÌýMcLay
  • YichiÌýZhang

Selected publications

  • Reed, A. D. E., 15 Jan 2025, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 306 p. (Expertise (Ithaca, N.Y.))

    Research output: Book/Report › Book

  • Open access
    Candea, M., Heywood, P., Reed, A. & Yarrow, T., 10 Sept 2025, (E-pub ahead of print) In: Current Anthropology. 66, 5, p. 740-758

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Reed, A. D. E., Feb 2025, Freedoms of speech: Anthropological perspectives on language, ethics and power. Candea, M., Fedirko, T., Heywood, P. & Wright, F. (eds.). London: University of Toronto Press, p. 267-286

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

  • Open access
    Reed, A. D. E., 10 May 2024, In: Suomen Antropologi. 48, 2, p. 27-49 22 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Open access
    Badman-King, A., Rice, T., Hurn, S., Rose, P. & Reed, A., 16 Oct 2024, In: Ethics in Science and Environmental Politics. 24, p. 77-88 12 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Open access
    Reed, A. D. E., 15 Dec 2023, Beyond description: anthropologies of explanation. Heywood, P. & Candea, M. (eds.). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, p. 221-240 20 p.

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

  • Open access
    Reed, A. D. E., 1 Sept 2023, In: Social Analysis. 67, 3, p. 90-101 12 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Open access
    Heywood, P. & Reed, A. D. E., 1 Sept 2023, In: Social Analysis. 67, 3, p. 45-57 13 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Open access
    Havea, J., Tomlinson, M., Al-Azem, T., Rasanayagam, J., Juewei, V., Mair, J., Bongmba, E. K., Haynes, N., Lamb, R., Sivakumar, D., Furani, K., Moosa, E. & Reed, A. (Editor), Mar 2022, In: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 28, 1, p. 297-347

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Open access
    Rose, P., Reed, A., Hurn, S., Badman-King, A. & Rice, T., 1 Nov 2022, In: Behavioural Processes. 203, 12 p., 104763.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

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