I am a social anthropologist and Project Lead of the ERC synergy grant ‘Cosmological Visionaries: Shamans, Scientists, and Climate Change at the Ethnic Borderlands of China and Russia’. I joined King’s in 2013 and founded the Religious and Ethnic Diversity in China and Asia Research Unit (REDCARU) at King’s in 2016. I am the Director of REDCARU, which has expanded into a network with branches at Yunnan Normal University and Yunnan Minzu University in Kunming, China.

I am the author or editor of four books and special issues: ‘Demons and Gods on Display: The Anthropology of Display and Worldmaking’ in Asian Ethnology; Crafting Chinese Memories: The Art and Materiality of Storytelling; Animism Beyond the Soul: Ontology, Reflexivity, and the Making of Anthropological Knowledge; and Fortune and the Cursed: The Sliding Scale of Time in Mongolian Divination.

Personal Webpage: http://www.swancutt.com/

Cosmological Visionaries Webpage: http://www.cosmovis.uk/

Religious and Ethnic Diversity in China and Asia Research Unit (REDCARU) Webpage: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/redcaru

Research interests and PhD supervision

• Cosmology and Ecology
• Climate Change
• Shamanism and Animism
• Visions, Dreams, and Worldmaking
• China, Mongolia, Buryats in Russia

The ERC ‘Cosmological Visionaries’ project is the first to document and foster the new joint visions of animistic priests, shamans, rural people, and their ethnologists, anthropologists, and natural scientists, to address climate change in Southwest China and Siberia. It is a joint research project with the University of Manchester. The project is throwing new light on the relationship between cosmology and ecology, which varies dramatically across Asia, and yet is subject to the geopolitical and policy-based initiatives that crosscut it. The project is also expanding the understanding of what ‘cosmology’ is by researching the anthropological, ethnohistorical, moral, ethical, philosophical, and natural scientific approaches to climate change-related visions.

The ideas behind the ‘Cosmological Visionaries’ project build upon my previous research on indigenous intellectuals, imagination and aesthetics, joking and humour, and value and fame. The Cosmological Visionaries theme also draws on my past work on how religious innovations are used to manage conflict and shape everyday life among Mongols from Mongolia, China, and Russia and the Nuosu of Southwest China, who all have different and yet comparable experiences of history, citizenship, political life, economies, environments, and notions of well-being.

I welcome enquiries from prospective research students with a strong commitment to long-term ethnographic fieldwork, especially among the ethnic minorities of China, Mongolia, or Russia. Prospective research students interested in working in other parts of the world––and especially with a focus on animism, shamanism, cosmology, ecology, climate change, or dreams––are also most welcome to contact me about potential PhD projects.

For more details, please see my full research profile.

Teaching

I teach the anthropology of religion at all levels (undergraduate and postgraduate).

Expertise and engagement

Please email me at katherine.swancutt@kcl.ac.uk if you are interested in any of the events at the Religious and Ethnic Diversity in China and Asia Research Unit (REDCARU).