Following up on Smithsonian Day last week, an event hosted by ‘Smithsonian’ magazine where participating museums and various cultural centers across the US provide free entry, Berghahn is excited to feature an excerpt from Extinct Monsters to Deep Time: Conflict, Compromise, and the Making of Smithsonian’s Fossil Halls by Diana E. Marsh. Describing participant observation […]

Can you give some background to yourself, and how you became an anthropologist in the first place? Well, I was born in 1958 in Cambridge and brought up there. I went to the Perse School (which incidentally is the origin of the name Free School Lane, where the Cambridge Anthropology Department is based). As an […]

“As disasters are increasing in number and intensity, so too will be the need for reconstruction…” So reads a line from the blurb of Making Things Happen, Jane Murphy Thomas’ account of post-earthquake reconstruction in Pakistan. And, sadly, how prescient it was, for her book was published just weeks before the same nation experienced a […]

Sara Jones, University of Birmingham The idea for Towards a Collaborative Memory came when I was researching my last book on memories of the East German Stasi. I was reading press releases from the Stasi Prison Memorial at Berlin Hohenschönhausen and came across one in which the then Director of the Memorial used a visit […]

September 6th marks National Read a Book Day in the United States. To celebrate, we want to share what the Berghahn staff is currently reading and a scholarly reading from Berghahn Books we recommend for you. Marion Berghahn, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Currently Reading: A Book of Secrets: Illegitimate Daughters, Absent Fathers by Michael Holroyd “Master […]

August 13th marks the anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall. The concrete barrier physically and ideologically divided Berlin from 1961 to 1989. Along with separating West Berlin from East German territory, it came to symbolize the “Iron Curtain” that separated Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. Browse relevant Berghahn titles on the history of […]

An interview with Jane Murphy Thomas JANE MURPHY THOMAS is an independent consultant, practitioner, project manager and social anthropologist in projects for UN agencies, NGOs, governments, donor agencies, and consulting firms, specializing in anthropological approaches and community participation in conflict and disaster-prone locations. Her book, Making Things Happen: Community Participation and Disaster Reconstruction in Pakistan […]

August 9, 2022 The United Nations’ International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples is observed on August 9 each year to honor the estimated 370 million indigenous people around the world. The day was established to recognize the first meeting of the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations held in Geneva in 1982. This year’s […]

Celebrated on July, 14, Bastille Day is the French national day and one of the most important bank holidays in France. The day commemorates the beginning of the French Revolution with the storming of the Bastille on the 14th July 1789, a medieval fortress and prison which was a symbol of tyrannical Bourbon authority and […]

June 20th is recognized by the UN as World Refugee Day to bring awareness to the plight of millions of refugees throughout the world and also to celebrate their strength and perseverance. Berghahn Books is pleased to offer a selection of our Open Access titles on Refugee and Migration Studies. Berghahn Journals is also offering free access […]