Emma Crewe

Emma Crewe is an anthropologist by training and has applied the discipline to research, teaching and practice. A researcher at SOAS, a doctoral supervisor at University of Hertfordshire's Business School, she is also Director of the Global Research Network on Parliaments and People (www.grnpp.org). She has written about civil society and parliament in Eastern Africa, South Asia and the UK.

Her work on development focuses on identity, inequality and the management of change. Her most recent book about development is written with Richard Axelby and collects the rich and critical insights of anthropologists from around the world. They put the spotlight on the politics of development encounters that are often hidden from view: the politics under the social.

When writing about parliament she does the opposite, exposing the social life within the world of British politics. She has written about Westminster MPs, peers and parliamentary officials. Her latest book reviews what anthropologists have written about parliaments around the world, illuminating themes that tend to be neglected by other disciplines and the media – the rhythms of political work, the improvisation of riffs and the performance of rituals – and analysing how they are entangled.