Research Affiliate
Research interests: Ageing, intergenerationality, and relations; design, the built environment, and cities; health, loneliness and well-being; space, place-making, and memory; Travellers, Gypsies, and Roma; states, bureaucratisation, and policy; time, temporality, and the future; family life, kinship, and care/affect; social/political theory, phenomenology, and epistemology; the UK and Nepal.
Anthony Howarth is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Population Ageing, a Research Associate at University College, and a Research Affiliate at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, at the University of Oxford. His current research focuses on how the relationship between design, place-making, and intergenerational living might enable healthy ageing through improving well-being and tackling loneliness. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this project examines whether, and in what ways, architectural design and intergenerational programs can facilitate beneficial relationships between different generations and, in doing so, enhance their health and quality of life.
Anthony also has a long-term interest in ‘nomads’ and the broader socio-political conditions in which they live. Previously, he was an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography. For this research, he was concerned with the social and political life of recently introduced policy and legislation affecting Travellers and Gypsies. Its focus was on how these policies move between the offices of state-administrations and third sector organisations, into assembly committees and courtrooms, and onto Traveller and Gypsy encampments. The aim, therefore, was to examine the inner workings of these organisations, in order to shed light on why Traveller/Gypsy policy and legislation is often incompatible with the lives of those it affects.
Anthony holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge, an MA in Social Anthropology from the University of Bristol, and a BSc in Social Sciences from the University of Bath. His doctoral thesis examined the social, material and familial dynamics of place-making in the context of Irish Travellers. He has also conducted fieldwork with the Humli-Khyampa, a group of ‘nomadic’ pastoralist/traders of Tibetan derivation in Far-West Nepal, and maintains a strong interest in Asian mobile groups.
Along with delivering a keynote address at the University of Cambridge, and convening a plenary roundtable at the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences Congress, Anthony has convened and chaired several panels at international conferences, and presented his research at workshops, seminars and congresses. He has supervised Cambridge undergraduate students on a broad range of anthropological topics and taught anthropology master’s students at Oxford. Anthony also took first prize in Cambridge anthropology’s ethnographic photograph competition. Beyond academia, he has worked with NGOs and legal actors on policy-related issues affecting Travellers and Gypsies.
