Emma Crewe is Professor of Social Anthropology and Director of the  Global Research Network for Parliaments and People at SOAS University of London. Her most recent book is An Anthropology of Parliaments: Entanglements in Democratic Politics (Routledge). She is on the right in the above photo, visiting the Sao Paulo Legislative Assembly with Professor Cristiane Bernardes.

Please tell us a little bit about how you entered academia and your academic career

I studied social anthropology at Edinburgh University. I fell in love with this discipline when I visited a village in Himachal Pradesh in 1984 as a 3^rd year undergraduate to study inter-caste relations. Caste was horrifying but it was exciting to realise that everything I knew about the world growing up in London was culturally specific. I had to unlearn to learn anew.

For years I worked in international development NGOs, continually arguing that we needed to unlearn our assumptions about progress and expertise and be more honest about the politics of aid. But due to disillusionment with my own capacity to change mindsets and practices, I returned to academia in the early 1990s getting a job as a university lecturer.

A few years later, I jumped to researching Parliaments – first the House of Lords and then the House of Commons. I wrote ethnographies of both Houses, aiming to be provocatively sympathetic in recognition of the increasingly difficult work that politicians and parliamentary officials do. I’m shifting towards a more critical view now, because scholars need to do a job of scrutiny as well, but I’m also creating coalitions for comparative work across parliaments (ww.grnpp.org). My two current jobs are a perfect combination for me: a research professor in social anthropology at SOAS University of London and supervisor of PhDs in management at the University of Hertfordshire. My obsession for today is how to make collaboration work well both intellectually and ethically.

Which five books/articles have been most important to you in your academic career?

As an undergraduate Nature, Culture and Gender edited by Carol MacCormack and Marilyn Strathern helped me realise that not only is gender experienced differently across cultures, but so are most interesting aspects of our being in the world. During my PhD the book that changed the way I think was Pierre Bourdieu’s An Outline of a Theory of Practice. I did not really understand it, but he gave me a way of conceiving of social structures beyond individuals and seeing how inequality was continually being created at every turn. His theory was so compelling, I got stuck in a post-structural rigidity for years. My examiner, Jonathan Spencer, was a massive influence – his article Post-colonialism and the Political Imagination (and later his book Anthropology, Politics and the State) – freed me up to think more about history, emotion and performance. Chantel Mohanty’s Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses alerted me to the racism in much Western feminism but also scholarship more generally. It wasn’t until I worked with Ralph Stacey – who has written a range of books about complexity and management – that I began to understand the experience of structural constraint and individual freedom through the concept of paradox. Our colleague Chris Mowles summarises this theoretical approach beautifully in his book Managing in Uncertainty: Complexity and the paradoxes of everyday organizational life.

Which people have been most influential and important to you in your academic career?

Tony Good suggested that I apply for a PhD award under his supervision. I wouldn’t have dreamt of doing this in a million years if he hadn’t encouraged me. He was a brilliant supervisor. I liked to take arguments to the extreme and he kept pulling me back to a more honest position.

Which of your own pieces of research are you most proud of?

I like a passage where I copy Woody Allen’s film Annie Hall and provide the transcript of giving evidence to a select committee alongside an embarrassing narrative of the emotions I was feeling, and political tactics I remember calculating, as a witness during the session (the Anthropology of Parliaments, p.123).

What has been your greatest achievement in academia?

Learning to live with imposter syndrome.

What has been your greatest disappointment in academia?

Failing to entirely banish imposter syndrome.

What is the first or most important thing you tell your students about parliaments?

What you can’t easily see is even more interesting that what is on public view.

Where were you born, where did you grow up, and where do you live now?

Born in Cambridge, grew up in London, about to move to Hastings.

What was your first job?

A waitress in a hotel in Norfolk.

What was the toughest job you ever had?

Teaching undergraduate courses about branches of anthropology that I knew nothing about at all.

What  would your ideal job be, if not an academic?

A novelist if I had the talent, which I don’t.

What are your hobbies?

Chatting to my daughters in cafes and kitchens.

What are your favourite novels?

Hopeful Monsters, by Nicholas Moseley – it’s about love, political idealism, and history of the twentieth century. I read it as a student and it prepared me for life. Otherwise magical realism starting with Isabel Allende’s The House of Spirits.

What is your favourite music?

Playlists created by my two daughters. I can enjoy the music, but also enjoy the thought of my daughters enjoying the music.

What is your favourite artwork?

Rodin sculptures in his museum in Paris for their beauty.

What is your favourite film?

Nearly all films directed by the Coen brothers for their humour.

What is your favourite building?

I find it interesting looking at religious buildings that are like Russian dolls – a temple inside a mosque inside a church etc – even though they can have disturbing histories.

What is your favourite tv show?

The Wire – the most sociological box set I’ve ever seen.

What is your favourite holiday destination?

Brancaster, North Norfolk, for the swimming, walks and mussels.

Hybrid proceedings in Parliament: yes please or no thanks?

No thanks.

Appointed or elected upper chamber?

Hybrid.

Restoration or Renewal?

Renewal.

Cat or Dog?

Cat in the house, dog outside.

Trains, planes or automobiles?

Trains.

Fish and chips or Curry?

Fish and chips in small towns, curry in the city.

Scones: Cornish or Devonshire method?

Cornish.

And, finally, a question asked by Ira and Bernadette, who have just turned four: What is your favourite letter of the alphabet and what’s your favourite number?

My favourites are Z and 5.

Felicity Matthews is Professor of Politics at the University of Sheffield and Director of the White Rose Doctoral Training Partnership. Her research concerns the exercise of power in the policy process, and the relationships that exist between government, parliament and citizens. She completed a Parliamentary Academic Fellowship in 2018-19, working under the auspices of the House of Commons Petitions Committee.

Please tell us a little bit about how you entered academia and your academic career

I kind of fell into academia. I was a bit rudderless as a teenager and didn’t really have any role models, being the first person in my family to go to uni and coming from a ‘low participation’ area. Growing up, I wanted to do something artsy such as being a graphic designer or illustrator, and was set to start an Art Foundation course after my A-levels. But I had a last minute change of heart, and ended up dropping out… and without enough ‘academic’ A-levels to get into university. So I ended up studying two A-levels condensed into an eight month (!) period: History, and Government and Politics. This was perhaps the most intensive year out ever – I was also working full-time alongside these compressed A-Levels – but I was inspired to study the subjects at university, and in the late 90s I arrived at to the University of Sheffield to study BA Modern History and Politics.

I loved it, and decided to train as a history teacher, duly embarking on a PGCE after my degree. Teaching sadly turned out to be the wrong choice for me at that time in my life, and instead I started working for a local housing association. But I’d stayed in touch with my undergraduate dissertation supervisor, Matt Flinders, who was encouraging me towards postgraduate study. And crucially, was able to explain to me the various funding options available. There was no way I could have undertaken further study without financial support, and I was incredible fortunate to be awarded a 1+3 scholarship from the University of Sheffield.

After this, things took a more conventional route: PhD, post-doc, post-doc, lectureship, lectureship, SL and then Professor in 2021. In recent years, I’ve moved towards university leadership and am currently the Director of the White Rose Doctoral Training Partnership. It’s mad to think about how far I’ve come, as I can still remember calling my mum in tears from a phone box to say I’d dropped out of art school, but didn’t know what to do!

Which five books/articles have been most important to you in your academic career?

I’m meant to whittle this down to five? Okay…. And in no particular order…. Anthony King’s 1976 ‘Modes of Executive-Legislative Relations’; Isabel Hardman’s 2019 Why We Get the Wrong Politicians; Emma Crewe’s 2015 House of Commons: an anthropology of MPs at work; David Judge’s 2014 Democratic Incongruitie: Representative Democracy in Britain; and, Christopher Hood and Martin Lodge’s 2006 The Politics of Public Service Bargains: Reward, Competency, Loyalty – and Blame.

Which people have been most influential and important to you in your academic career?

I’ve been so fortunate to be supported by excellent colleagues who have generously shared some fantastic opportunities and have put their faith in me.  Foremost amongst these is Matt Flinders, who was my PhD supervisor, and has been a long-time friend.  Without Matt, I wouldn’t have an academic career, as he opened so many doors for me at the start.  More recently, the kindness and wisdom of past-and-present Sheffield colleagues including Nicola Phillips, Ruth Blakely, John Flint and Craig Watkins has been greatly valued as I’ve started to move into University leadership.  I’m learning from fantastic role models!

What has been your greatest achievement in academia?

Without doubt, being made Professor.  I went crazy and changed all of my bank cards the same day I found out!

What has been your greatest disappointment in academia?

There isn’t enough space to list, and we certainly do need more honesty about the disappointment to success ratio (I reckon about 10:1).  But my greatest disappointment was early on in my career when, after pouring my heart and soul into a new third year module, I got so-so student feedback accompanied by some unnecessarily personal (dare I say gendered) feedback.  Not much sleep that evening.  It’s really incumbent on all of us to think about how our actions and word affects others.

What is the first or most important thing you tell your students about parliaments?

If you don’t like the way in which politics is done, do something about it.  Don’t grumble from the sidelines.

Where were you born, where did you grow up, and where do you live now?

I was born in Margate and moved when I was eight to a Fleetwood, which is a small fishing town near Blackpool.  I then moved to Sheffield at 19 to go to uni.  Since then, I’ve lived in various bits of Sheffield, had a couple of incursions into Leeds, a very enjoyable period in the Derbyshire Dales, and now live in Harrogate.

What was your first job?

Working on a cake stall on a local market.  I have a sweet tooth, so must confess to eating more stock than was defensible!

What was the toughest job you ever had?

Secondary school teacher.

What  would your ideal job be, if not an academic?

Architect, without a doubt.  I would love to design fantastic buildings whilst wearing funky glasses and black knitwear.

What are your hobbies?

I spend too much time knee-deep in yarn, as I love knitting and crochet.  It’s the ultimate destress!  Gardening too, as I love getting up close to nature.

What are your favourite novels?

Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia.  The BBC adaptation was broadcast when I was 13, and straight after the series I read the book.  It made such an impression on me as a bored and stifled teenager growing up in a small fishing town miles away from the action, and I love re-reading it now.

What is your favourite music?

Where to begin? In the interests of brevity stick with just one old-time favourite, which is Suede’s first album.  Massive memories of my youth, including seeing Suede live at Blackpool Empress Ballroom in 1995!

What is your favourite artwork?

‘Nocturne: Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge’ by James Abbot McNeill Whistler is one of my longstanding favourites.  That said, my tastes are generally more bright and graphic.  Give me anything by Keith Haring and I am happy!

What is your favourite film?

Definitely The Full Monty.  Everything about it is perfect, particularly its Sheffield-ness!

What is your favourite building?

Too many to list, but the Lloyds Building is probably my number one.  I saw it just after it opened when I was 7 or 8, and it was like something from space.  Completely path-breaking, a perfect representation of the 1980s City of London/Big Bang zeitgeist, and to me it remains fresh and exciting.

What is your favourite tv show?

The Great British Sewing Bee.  I never miss an episode!  Ditto Gardener’s World.

What is your favourite sport?

I sometimes get dragged to a local football match on Boxing Day.  I actually don’t like football (or any sport really…), but have fond memories of seeing Fleetwood Town FC with loved ones no longer with us.

What is your favourite food and restaurant?

Mmmmm pizza!  We have two pizza ovens at home (outdoors and indoors – all weather bases covered).  But nothing can beat Proove in Broomhill, Sheffield and Pizza Social in Harrogate.

Hybrid proceedings in Parliament: yes please or no thanks?

Yes please, but in a way that is inclusive and ensures that people are not left behind.  This is a wider challenge related to hybrid, and I am concerned about the impact on careers for those who already face barriers to progression.

Appointed or elected upper chamber?

Fixed-term appointment according to stringent criteria/vetting and with a strict limit on numbers.

Restoration or Renewal?

Full decant followed by a permanent move into a modern and inclusive space.

Cat or Dog?

Cats for now – I love my two ragdolls!  But a dog for retirement.  I’d love a Scottish Terrier, and always take the dog token if I am ever coerced into playing Monopoly.

Trains, planes or automobiles?

Trains. Let someone else take the strain of getting me from A to B!

Fish and chips or Curry?

Fish and chips are nice as an idea only.  Give me a good veggie curry any day of the week.

And, finally, a question asked by Ira and Bernadette, who have just turned four: What is your favourite animal and your favourite bird?

My favourite animal is a platypus.  I would love to see one in real life.  My favourite bird is a wood pigeon.  They’re bumbling and gentle, despite the ridiculous noise they make on take-off.