Marett Memorial Lecture with Professor Yael Navaro

Exeter College and the University of Oxford’s School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography are pleased to announce the 2023 Marett Memorial Lecture:

Professor Yael Navaro (Professor of Social, Political and Psychological Anthropology, University of Cambridge) will discuss “Catastrophe and More-than-Human Worlds”

Friday 13 October 2023 at 5.00pm, Cohen Quad, Walton Street

‘Memory’ has been the overarching framework for anthropological studies of political violence in its long durée. But, until more recently, ‘memory’ was conceptualized in a human-centred way, with works on loss, trauma, their social construction, cultural mediation, and collective commemoration. In this lecture, I ask if memory’s qualities and associations may be studied across ‘more-than-human’ worlds in sites of catastrophe and its aftermaths. Reflecting on the evidentiary limitations on research in the aftermath of catastrophe, when the human witnesses have been absented or silenced, I explore memory’s ‘other-than-human’ and ‘more-than-secular’ possibilities. Threading my ethnographic work on the aftermath of the Armenian genocide through with the aftermath of the recent earthquake in south Turkey, I ask if ‘more-than-human’ beings, ‘non-human’ things, and ‘more-than-secular’ entities may be incorporated in memory’s conceptual work and evidentiary potentialities.

The lecture will be from 5 pm until 6pm, with a drinks reception afterwards.

Booking is not required and all members of the University of Oxford are welcome.