Tobias Kelly

Name Dr Tobias Kelly Title Senior Lecturer Organisation Social Anthropology, School of Social and Political Science
University of Edinburgh Address 5.28 Chrystal Macmillan Building 15a George Square Edinburgh UK EH8 9LD Telephone +44 (131) 650 3986 E-Mail Toby.Kelly@ed.ac.uk URL http://www.san.ed.ac.uk/staff/kelly_tobias

On Research Leave until August 2011. 

Research Interests

• Human Rights
• Middle East
• Israel/Palestine
• Citizenship
• Political Violence

PhD Supervision

Interested in supervising students in areas related to:

• Legal and political anthropology
• Human rights and the politics of rights claims
• The Israeli/Palestinian conflict
  

Biographical statement

Tobias Kelly’s research interests include human rights, legal anthropology, law and development, and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. He has recently started a long term ESRC funded project that explores the role of law and medicine in the recognition of torture. The research draws on fieldwork in the UK, Israel/Palestine, and at the UN, to produce a multi-sited study of the implications of international human rights claims for understandings of cruelty and suffering. In doing so the project examines the forms of knowledge produced by clinicians, lawyers and activists as they struggle with the tensions between ethical and bureaucratic commitments. He has also carried out long term fieldwork amongst West Bank Palestinians, concentrating on issues of citizenship and everyday experiences of violence. Other research has focused on issues of treachery, treason and collaboration.  He received a PhD in Anthropology from the London School of Economics in 2003, and has worked at the Institute of Law of Birzeit University, the Crisis States Programme at the LSE, and the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at Oxford University.

Selected Publications

Books and Edited Collections

In Press. Traitors: Suspicion, Intimacy and the Ethics of State-Building. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. (Co-edited with Sharika Thiranagama).

2007. Paths to International Justice: Social and Legal Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Co-edited with Marie-Bénédicte Dembour).

2006. Law, Violence and Sovereignty among West Bank Palestinians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

2006. Special Issue on ‘State Violence’, Critique of Anthropology 26(3). (Co-edited with Alpa Shah).

Journal Articles

2009. 'The UN Commitee Against Torture: Human Rights Monitoring and the Legal Recognition of Torture', Human Rights Quarterly 31(3): 777-800.

2008. ‘The Attractions of Accountancy: Living an Ordinary Life during the Second Palestinian Intifada’, Ethnography 9(3): 351-376.

2006. ‘Documented Lives: Fear and the Uncertainties of Law During the Second Palestinian Intifada’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 11(1): 89-107.

2006. ‘‘Jurisdictional Politics’ in the Occupied West Bank: Territory, Community and Economic Dependency in the Formation of Legal Subjects’, Law and Social Inquiry 31(1): 39-74.

2006. ‘Protection and State Violence’, Critique of Anthropology 26(2): 251-257. (Co-authored with Alpa Shah).

2005. ‘Law, Culture and Access to Justice under the Palestinian National Authority’, Development and Change 36(5): 865-886.

2005. ‘The Jurisdictional Politics of Israel/Palestine: The Case of Palestinian Workers in Israeli Settlements’, Yearbook of Middle Eastern and Islamic Law 2004: 167-179.

2004. ‘Returning Home: Law, Violence and Displacement Among West Bank Palestinians’, PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 27(2): 95-112; also available in Ethnography and Law (2007), Eve Darian-Smith (ed.). International Library of Essays in Law and Society, Aldershot: Ashgate; and in a slightly different form in Struggles for Home: Violence, Hope and the Movement of People (2009), Stef Jansen and Staffan Lofving (eds.). Oxford: Berghahn.

Book Chapters

In Press. 'In a Treacherous State: The Fear of Collaboration among West Bank Palestinians', in Sharika Thiranagama and Tobias Kelly (eds.) Traitors: Suspicion, Intimacy and the Ethics of State-Building. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

In Press. 'Introduction- Spectres of Treason', in Sharika Thiranagama and Tobias Kelly (eds.) Traitors: Suspicion, Intimacy and the Ethics of State-Building. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. (Co-authored with Sharika Thiranagama).

2009. ‘The Refugee Factor in Two Protracted Conflicts: Cyprus and Palestine Compared’, in Nathalie Tocci and Thomas Diez (eds.) Cyprus: A Conflict at the Crossroads. Manchester: Manchester University Press. (Co-authored with Peter Loizos).

2009. ‘Laws of Suspicion: Legal Status, Space and the Impossibility of Separation in the Israeli-occupied West Bank’, in Franz von Benda-Beckmann, Keebet von Benda-Beckmann and Julia Eckert (eds.) Rules of Law and Laws of Ruling On the Governance of Law. Farnham: Ashgate.

2009. ‘The Politics of Palestinian Legal Reform: Judicial Independence and Accountability under Occupation’, in Andrew Jefferson and Steffen Jensen (eds.) State Violence and Human Rights: State Officials in the South. London: Routledge.

2008. ‘Documents, Security and Suspicion: The Social Production of Ignorance’, in Julia M. Eckert (ed.) The Social Life of Anti-Terrorism Laws: The War on Terror and the Classifications of the "Dangerous Other". Bielefeld: Transcript.

2007. ‘Introduction: The Social Lives of International Justice’, in Marie-Bénédicte Dembour and Tobias Kelly (eds.) Paths to International Justice: Social and Legal Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Co-authored with Marie-Bénédicte Dembour).

2007. ‘Law and Disorder in the Palestinian West Bank: The Execution of Suspected Collaborators Under Israeli Occupation’, in David Pratten and Atreyee Sen (eds.) Global Vigilantes. London: Hurst.

2002 ‘Introduction’ to M. Mundy (ed.) Law and Anthropology, Ashgate: Dartmouth Press. (Co-authored with Martha Mundy).