Dr Chika Watanabe

Biography

I received my PhD in anthropology from Cornell University in 2013 and held a Postdoctoral Associate position in the Inter-Asia Program at Yale University in 2013-2014. I have worked with various development, emergency relief, and other NGOs since 2002 and continue to hold an interest in international aid work from both academic and practitioner perspectives. I completed an MSc in Forced Migration at the Refugee Studies Centre in Oxford in 2005.

I am also undertaking a project with fellow anthropologists around the concept of 'patchwork ethnography'. We aim to 'bring out of the closet' the fact that professional and personal lives intersect in knowledge production, and that can be a strength in our theoretical and methodological interventions. Check out our webpage https://www.patchworkethnography.com/ and follow us on Twitter @PatchworkEthno. 

Social responsibility

Engaged Anthropology

First funded by the Social Responsibility in the Curriculum Award in 2016-7 and now ongoing, my class 'The Anthropology of Development and Humanitarianism' revolves around a final visit from professionals in development and humanitarian aid. Students work in groups corresponding to the topics of expertise of each visitor and create a blog entry, where they explain how they think that anthropological analysis can help us understand development and humanitarian issues better. In 2021-2022, they produced lesson plans for Year 10 students (14-15 year olds). See their outstanding work here: https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/anthropology-of-aid/.