Biography

I work as an academic who strives to bridge research and practice, looking questions of how people build understanding, solidarity and shared values across lines of meaningful difference. I completed my PhD in Social Anthropology as a Gates Cambridge Scholar, and am currently a Lecturer in Social Justice at King’s College London. At Cambridge, my research focused on how people imagined and worked to build community in a highly-diverse London neighbourhood, and what drew people together or held them apart. At Oxford, I looked at how cuts to public services were impacting the experiences of first-time parents, and at how the design of our cities and services shapes possibilities for care. My current research spans a number of projects, including work looking at how practices of community organising in the UK strive to build diverse, grassroots political coalitions; work exploring how the energy transition might catalyse new collectives and forms of political involvement; and a new project looking at the interplay of intimate family dynamics and large scale political contestation, in relation to the growing significance of inheritance in economics and politics today. I am committed to producing public-facing research that's capable of producing real change, and have worked for a range of non-profit and community groups, from the small to the international.

Previous Education

University of St Andrews MA (Honours) International Relations and Social Anthropology, First Class (Undergraduate MA) 2008
University of Oxford MSc Migration Studies

Links

https://farhansamanani.net