Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies
Finland
fellow
Melissa Demian
Home institution
University of St Andrews
Country of origin (home institution)
United Kingdom
Discipline(s)
Anthropology and ethnology
Theme(s)
Contemporary violence & Justice
Post-colonialism
Religion
Fellowship dates
›
Biography
Dr Melissa Demian is a social anthropologist ordinarily based at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. Over a 26-year professional career she has conducted research on legal pluralism, customary law, local-level courts and informal disputing systems, gender-based violence, and community organisations in urban settlements. Most of this research has been conducted in Papua New Guinea, and some has been conducted in collaboration with the international development sector. She is the author of In Memory of Times to Come: Ironies of History of Southeastern Papua New Guinea (Berghahn Books 2021), and editor of Grassroots Law in Papua New Guinea (Australian National University Press 2023).
Research Project
Sorcery and Conspiracy: Anthropology Engages with Alternate Realities
Fake news demands real scholarship, especially in a media and political landscape that attributes popular narratives about hidden power to irrational or ill-informed "beliefs." This new book project is premised upon a comparative analytical strategy that deploys anthropology's established capacity for examining sorcery and witchcraft accusations as a foundation for examining conspiracy theories. Both phenomena are to be treated as analogous subjects for the purposes of the project, and also as an epistemological provocation. If both sorcery and conspiracy narratives are approached primarily as social and political in nature rather than as matters of belief, does this open up new opportunities for understanding what is happening when these phenomena occur?
Research Interests:
Legal anthropology, socio-legal studies, colonial history, ethnography of the Western Pacific