Vered Amit, PhD

Education

PhD, University of Manchester

Current research interests

Mobilities: an ongoing preoccupation with the workings of and intersections between different forms of transnational mobility. Of particular interest has been an exploration of the disjunctures that can be sought through mobility and the implications of these discontinuities for the development and attenuation of various forms of sociality. Projects exploring these issues include:

1. Gearing Down: An Anthropological Study of Changing Mobility Patterns among Previously Peripatetic Professionals.  

This study is being conducted in collaboration with Professor Noel Dyck (Simon Fraser University). The study will focus on the factors precipitating changing patterns of mobility among two sets of professionals (international consultants; athletes and sports officials) whose work has previously required frequent travel and relocation.  

2. Coming of Age as Dual Nationals

An Anthropological Study of Belonging and Mobility among Young Canadians. This research project considers the implications of inherited dual citizenship for youths and young adults as they embark on key life transitions and attendant choices about education, employment and/or residence. Since young persons inheriting this status are usually negotiating the effects of choices made by their parents regarding migration, naturalization or registration, the project also considers the workings of multiple citizenships as these are refracted across different generations of families who have been able to pass on EU or American citizenship to children who are also Canadian nationals.

3. A study of Canadian student travel abroad

This project explores the ramifications of the expanding panoply of programs eliciting and encouraging student travel abroad, the increasing valorization of 'international experience' as a rite of passage for middle class western youths and the experiences entailed in and orientations cultivated through such travel.

4. Reconceptualizations of sociality with a particular emphasis on concepts of community as well as disjunction

This interest has involved the production of an edited volume (Realizing Community) and two co-authored volumes with Nigel Rapport (1.The Trouble with Community; 2.Community, Cosmopolitanism and the Problem of Human Commonality.  This interest has also involved exchanges with a small international network of anthropologists who have been meeting regularly both on line and in workshops.

5. Career, Home and Movement among Travelling Professionals

This work focused on transnationality, conceptions of home, orientations towards mobility, the social production of knowledge and expertise among consultants based in Canada whose work involves frequent and ongoing transnational assignments.

6. Globalization and Transnationality in the Cayman Islands

Focused on the development of offshore finance and tourism industries in the Cayman Islands and the accompanying reliance on a large expatriate labour force. Examined issues of citizenship, expatriacy, transnational connections, notions of home, belonging and migration.

Pacing Mobilities: Timing, Intensity, Tempo and Duration of Human Movements

(2020) Vered Amit & Noel B. Salazar (eds), New York and Oxford: Berghahn

Mobility and Cosmopolitanism: Complicating the Interaction between Aspirations and Practice

Special Guest Issue, Vered Amit and Pauline Gardiner Barber editors, Identities:Global Studies in Culture and Power, 22 (5), October, 2015.

Republication in book form as part of the Routledge Special Issues as Books Series.  Oxford and New York: Routledge., 2017. 

Thinking through Sociality: An Anthropological Interrogation of Key Concepts

Vered Amit (ed) (2015).  Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books

Community, Cosmopolitanism and the Problem of Human Commonality

Vered Amit and Nigel Rapport (2012).  London: Pluto Press

Young Men in Uncertain Times

Vered Amit and Noel Dyck (eds) 2012.  Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books.

Changes of Place: Interrogating the Continuities and Disjunctures of Movement

Vered Amit and Karen Fog Olwig (guest editors) (2011) special issue.  Anthropologica, 53(1)

International Student and Youth Mobility

Vered Amit and Noel Dyck (guest editors) (2010), special issue. Anthropology in Action, 17:1.

Going First Class? New Approaches Towards Privileged Travel and Movement

Vered Amit (ed) (2007). New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books.

Claiming Individuality: The Cultural Politics of Distinction

Vered Amit and Noel Dyck (eds) (2006). London: Pluto Press

A Biographical Dictionary of Social and Cultural Anthropology

Vered Amit (ed) 2004 first edition; 2008 new revised paperback version. London and New York: Routledge.

The Trouble with Community: Anthropological Reflections on Movement, Identity and Collectivity

Vered Amit and Nigel Rapport (2002). London: Pluto Press

Realizing Community: Concepts, Social Relationships and Sentiments

Vered Amit (ed) (2002).  London and New York: Routledge

Constructing the Field: Ethnographic Fieldwork in the Contemporary World

Vered Amit-Talai (ed) (2000). London and New York: Routledge

Re-situating Identities: The Politics of Race, Ethnicity and Culture

Vered Amit-Talai and Caroline Knowles (eds) (1996). Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press

Youth Cultures: A Cross-Cultural Perspective

Vered Amit-Talai and Helena Wulff (eds) (1995).  London and New York: Routledge

Urban Lives: Fragmentation and Resistance

Vered Amit-Talai and Henri Lustiger-Thaler (eds) (1994). Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.

Armenians in London: The Management of Social Boundaries

Vered Amit Talai (1989). Manchester: Manchester University Press