Social and Political Sciences, Philosophy, and Anthropology

Photo of Dr Geoffrey Hughes

Dr Geoffrey Hughes

Senior Lecturer (Anthropology)

G.Hughes3@exeter.ac.uk

Amory B304

Overview

My research and teaching focus on the politics of everyday life in the contemporary Middle East, with an emphasis on kinship, gender, Islam, and the state. I have spent over four years living and working in the region, including over two years conducting long-term ethnographic research in Jordan funded by the US National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the British Academy. I have published extensively on how people living in the Middle East work to re-imagine a range of globally circulating technologies for large-scale population management, from Facebook-mediated blood feuds to the information infrastructures of government Sharia Courts.

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Research

Jordan and the Middle East; Kinship; Personhood; Emotion and Affect; Marriage; Gender; The Anthropology of Islam; Political Economy; The State; Institutions; Infrastructure; Science and Technology Studies

Current and Previous Research Projects:

'The Value of Moderation: Language, Emotion, and Islam in Jordan' (British Academy and Council for British Research in the Levant, 2019)

'Nation and Agnation: Kinship, Conflict and Social Control in Contemporary Jordan' (National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Centre of Oriental Research, 2017)

'The Politics of Envy: Kinship, State and the Management of Inequality in Jordan' (London School of Economics, 2016)

'Affection and Mercy: Kinship, State and the Management of Marriage in Contemporary Jordan' (University of Michigan, 2013)

'Managing Marriage: Kinship and Bureaucracy in Contemporary Jordan' (National Science Foundation and the University of Michigan, 2011-2012)

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Projects

  • Humanitarian Ethics - funded by: University of Exeter, University of Istanbul, and the Turkish research council (Tübitak)

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Supervision

I am open to supervising PhD students interested in the following topics, preferably with an area studies focus on the Middle East:

  • Kinship and Gender
  • Emotions and Affect
  • Social Media
  • State- and Institution-Formation
  • Critical Legal Anthropology
  • Islam

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Publications

Copyright Notice: Any articles made available for download are for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the copyright holder.

| 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 |

2024

2023

2022

2021

  • Hughes G. (2021) /Living Water/ and the Politics and Anti-Politics of Water in Jordan.
  • Hughes G, Ben-Yehoyada N, Scheele J, Dua J. (2021) Forum, Journal of Legal Anthropology, volume 5, no. 2, pages 74-94, DOI:10.3167/jla.2021.0501of. [PDF]
  • Hughes G. (2021) Living Water and the Politics and Anti-Politics of Water in Jordan. [PDF]
  • Hughes GF. (2021) Kinship, Islam, and the Politics of Marriage in Jordan Affection and Mercy, Indiana University Press.
  • Hughes G, Walter AM. (2021) Staying tuned connections beyond ‘the field’, Social Analysis, volume 65, no. 1, pages 102-189, DOI:10.3167/sa.2020.650105.
  • Hughes G, Walter A-M. (2021) STAYING TUNED Connections beyond 'the Field', SOCIAL ANALYSIS, volume 65, no. 1, pages 89-102, DOI:10.3167/sa.2021.650105. [PDF]

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

  • Hughes G. (2016) The Emergence of "Divorce Before Consummation" in Jordanian Sharia Courts.
  • Hughes G. (2016) Not So Crazy in Love: What we can Learn from the Poetry of Young Afghan Refugees.
  • Hughes GF. (2016) The Proliferation of Men: Markets, Property, and Seizure in Jordan, Anthropological Quarterly, volume 89, no. 4, pages 1081-1108, DOI:10.1353/anq.2016.0069. [PDF]

2015

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Teaching

Modules taught

  • ANT1005 - Introduction to Social Anthropology: Exploring Cultural Diversity
  • ANT2016 - Anthropology of the State
  • ANT2017 - Anthropology of Islam
  • ANT2041 - How Organisations Work: Ethnography in Institutions

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Biography

I hail from the US, where I studied at Reed College (BA in Anthropology, 2006) before joining the Peace Corps and serving for two years as a schoolteacher in a rural village in southern Jordan. While I don't know how much good I did my first students, I found Jordan fascinating and left determined to learn more. I returned to the US to study anthropology at the University of Michigan with a focus on Jordan and the broader Middle East, earning my MA in 2011 and my PhD in 2015. I subsequently joined the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics, where I was a fellow for three years, before beginning a lectureship at the University of Exeter in 2018. I travel to Jordan regularly, where I have now conducted over two years of ethnographic fieldwork with the support of the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and, more recently, the British Academy. 

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