Dr. Farhan Samanani

Farhan Samanani completed his Ph.D. in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge in 2017, having been a Gates Cambridge Scholar. There, his Ph.D. focused on how residents of the superdiverse London neighbourhood of Kilburn understood and attempted to shape forms of community. Before joining MPI-MMG, he worked as a Post-doctoral Research Associate in Urban Studies at the University of Oxford on a project examining the impacts of austerity on first-time parents. He has co-edited two collections, on care and hospitality in the city, and on ethnographies of home, published as a special issue of City and Society, and as an edited volume with Bloomsbury Academic, respectively. His other publications and projects also cover migration policy, everyday ethics in contemporary London, and race, identity, and belonging in the UK. In addition to his academic work, Farhan is committed to applying academic insights, working in collaboration with organizations and policy-makers, and has done work on diversity, migration, and belonging for a number of organizations, including the World Bank, the Runnymede Trust, and Share Action.

Research projects

• Diversity in translation: community organizing and questions of the commons in the UK
• How to live with each other: an Anthropologist's notes on sharing a divided world

Publications

Books

Samanani, F., & Lenhard, J. (2019). Home: ethnographic encounters. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Link

Journal Articles

Middleton, J., & Samanani, F. (forthcoming). “Accounting for care within human geography”. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers.

Samanani, F. (2021). Power in a minor key: Rethinking anthropological accounts of power alongside London’s community organisers. Critique of Anthropology, 41(3), 303-319. Link

Taras Fedirko, T. F., Samanani, F., & Williamson, H. F. (2021). Grammars of liberalism. Social Anthropology, 29(2), 373-386. Link

Parsons, C., Rojon, S., Rose, L., & Samanani, F. (2018). High skilled migration through the lens of policy. Migration Studies, mny037. Link

Samanani, F. (2017). Introduction to special issue: Cities of refuge and cities of strangers: Care and hospitality in the city. City & Society, 29 (2), 242-259. Link

Contributions to an Encyclopedia

Samanani, F. (forthcoming). Race and Racism in Britain. In: Routledge Encyclopedia of Race and Racism (Ed. Solomos, J.). London: Routledge.

Samanani, F. & Lenhard, J. (2019). House and Home. In: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology (Eds. Stein, F., Lazar, S., Candea, M., Diemberger, H., Robbins, J., Sanchez, A., & Stasch, R.). University of Cambridge.

Other

Samanani, F. (2018). Race in Britain: inequality, identity, belonging. In Cumberland Lodge Research Associate Conference Blog. Link