Dr David Shankland

MA (Hons), Edin. PhD (Cantab)

Reader in Social Anthropology Department of Archaeology and Anthropology University of Bristol 43 Woodland Road BRISTOL BS8 1UU, UK Tel: +44 (0) 117 954 6073 Fax: +44 (0) 117 954 6001 E-mail: D.P.Shankland@bristol.ac.uk

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Background

David Shankland is a social anthropologist with a special interest in modern Turkey, particularly social change, religion and politics in the Republican period. He has made a special study of the Alevi (mystical) minority, for which he was supervised by Ernest Gellner at Cambridge supported by an Anglo-French ESRC studentship. After initial fieldwork between 1988-1990, he returned to Turkey in 1992 as the Assistant and then Acting Director of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, a post he held until 1995, when he returned to take up a lectureship at the University of Wales Lampeter.

During the summers between 1995 and 1998, he was part of the excavation team at the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük, examining the interface between the excavation team and the local villagers. He continued with this work more intensively with an ESRC grant throughout 2000, and is currently preparing the final publication of that work, which also resulted in two international conferences on the work of Hasluck entitled: 'Archaeology, Anthropology and Heritage in the Balkans and Anatolia: the life and time of F.W. Hasluck, 1888-1920'. The proceedings of the first have been published by Isis Press  Istanbul, in two volumes, and are available from them. The proceedings of the second conference will be published in 2007.

In 2002, Shankland went to Germany as a Humboldt Fellow, tenured at the Institute for Turkish History, Language and Culture at the University of Bamberg. There, supported also in part by an ESRC grant, he examined the integration of the Alevi minority into German society. This project is likely to continue for the coming five years or so, as one of its aims is to attempt to identify longitudinal trends within this migrant community in Germany.

In 2003, Shankland moved to Bristol as part of an established team of lecturers, with the aim of starting anthropology at the University. Amongst our initiatives is the study of south-east Europe at Masters level, major ethnographic projects in Turkey and also comparative research projects into the reformulation of Islam in Europe. Prospective enquiries from students or post-docs who would like to work in these areas are very welcome.

Research

• Turkey
• The Social Anthropology of the Middle East and North Africa
• Migration and religion in Europe
• The interface between heritage, anthropology and archaeology
• The history and theory of British Social Anthropology
• The special study of K. Popper, E. Gellner, and F.W. Hasluck
• Archaeology, Anthropology and Heritage in the Balkans

 Responsibilities

• Associate Editor, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies
• Vice-President, Archaeology and Anthropology Section: British Association for the Advancement of Science
• Honorary Treasurer, Royal Anthropology Institute