Staff profile

Thomas Yarrow did his undergraduate degree in archaeology and anthropology (Cambridge University, 2000), before undertaking his PhD in social anthropology (Cambridge University, completed 2006). After completing his PhD he held a Leverhulme fellowship in anthropology at the University of Manchester. He has also lectured in anthropology at the Centre of West African Studies, University of Birmingham and at the School of Environment Natural Resources and Geography, at the University of Wales, Bangor.

Research Summary

My research has various strands, all grounded in the method of ethnography. This involves a commitment to knowing through deep and long-term immersion in other social worlds. My work aims to capture these everyday lived realities and uses these perspectives to think through broader conceptual and practical problems. Across a range of projects and publications, I have developed enduring interests in the social significance of the past, the nature and role of ‘expertise’, and the dialectics between conservation and development that are central to modern understandings of time as a form of ‘progress’.

Most of my recent research focuses on the social significance of the past. I am particularly interested in the ways that memory, history, nostalgia and memorialisation arise from twenty-first century concerns, including increasing economic precarity, political dis-affection and the growing sense of climate emergency. Through various projects, in the UK and Ghana, I have shown how orientations to the past reflect present senses of loss, uncertainty or threat and help people to imagine their lives in relation to these predicaments.   

My most recent research focuses on steam enthusiasm, using this as a lens to explore bigger questions about the politics of nostalgia in twenty-first century Britain. Similar issues of memory and identity are also central to a major collaborative project, exploring the contemporary significance of Iron Age and Roman heritage in the UK (AHRC funded).

Alongside this, I have conducted research focusing on the construction of the historic environment as a material and symbolic object of interest. These issues were examined through ethnographic research based at the national heritage agency, Historic Environment Scotland (British Academy funded) and through a project on the effects of conservation science on understandings of historic value and significance of historic monuments (AHRC funded). They were also central to a project on the tensions between heritage conservation and energy conservation in the built environment (EPSRC and AHRC funded).

An earlier strand of my research examined ‘development’ as an idea that sustains multiple and conflicting practices. Research on the Volta Resettlement Project, Ghana, (Leverhulme Trust funded) focused on the materialisation of ideas of ‘development’ and ‘modernity’ and how these ideas are embedded in the everyday lives of resettlers. Research on Ghanaian NGOs, looked at the social relations and practices through which they pursue various forms of social action (Development Beyond Politics, Palgrave Macmillan). The theoretical significance of this work lies in its challenge to the political reductionism of prevailing development scholarship, and the ‘Afro-pessimism’ of wider social theory pertaining to the post-colonial state in Africa.

Across my research on heritage and development, a key aim has been to better understand the practices and social relations through which expert knowledge is produced and the institutional contexts in which it circulates. Collectively these help to show how different kinds of expertise are linked to interventions that profoundly shape the material, historic and built environments we all inhabit.

Grants

• July 2016-September 2019. (CI). 'Iron Age and Roman
  Heritages: exploring ancient identities in modern Britain' (AHRC, £689,802)
• June 2014 - June 2016: (PI) Building on the Past: understanding contested heritage futures through a study of renovation and retrofit to historic buildings (£120,271, AHRC)
• February - December 2013: Materiality, Authenticity and Value in the Historic Environment: a study of the effects of material transformation and scientific Intervention (CI with J.Hughes, PI, and S. Jones, CI) (£98,610, AHRC)
• October 2012 - March 2013: (PI) Building on the Past: interdisciplinary explorations of the relation between authenticity, energy and the built environment (EPSRC/ Durham Energy Institute, £9,600)
• April 2012 - October 2012: Negotiating historic value and low carbon futures (PI, £2000, University of Durham)
• 2010 - 2012: Craft and Conservation: an ethnographic study (CI with S. Jones) (£5,400, British Academy)
• 2009 - 2011: Reconsidering Detachment (CI with M. Candea, J. Cook and C. Trundle) (ESRC, £40,000)
• 2006 - 2008: Contesting Development and Modernity: the Volta Resettlement Project, Ghana. (Leverhulme Trust, Early Career Fellowship)
• 2008 - 2009: Developing Anthropology: Towards a reflexive approach to Development (with S. Venkatesan) ($10,000, Wenner Gren Foundation; £2000, Critique of Anthropology)
• 2002 - 2006: Knowledge and Information in the Practice of International Development (ESRC PhD Studentship)

• Heritage and the politics of the past
• Memory, nostalgia and time
• Conservation
• Architecture and the social construction of built environment
• Energy and climate change
• NGOs and Civil Society
• Development knowledge and practice
• Activism
• Space and Place
• Expert knowledge
• Bureaucracy and Organisations
• Intersections between Archaeology and Anthropology
• Regional specialisms in the UK and West Africa

Authored book

• Jones, S., & Yarrow, T. (2022). The Object of Conservation: an ethnography of heritage practice. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315622385
• Yarrow, T. (2019). Architects: Portraits of a Practice. Cornell University Press
• Yarrow, T. (2011). Development Beyond Politics: Aid, Activism and NGOs in Ghana. Palgrave Macmillan

Chapter in book

• Matt, C., & Thomas, Y. (2023). Emergent Explanation. In P. Heywood, & M. Candea (Eds.), Beyond Description: Anthropologies of Explanation (81-103). Cornell University Press
• Yarrow, T. (2018). Afterword. Mistrust after Truth?. In F. Mühlfried (Ed.), Mistrust : ethnographic approximations (219-224). transcript. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839439234-012
• Yarrow, T. (2016). Experimental Afterlives: making and unmaking developmental laboratories in Ghana. In J. Evans, A. Karvonen, & R. Raven (Eds.), The experimental city (205-217). Routledge
• Candea, C., Cook, J., Trundle, C., & Yarrow, T. (2015). Introduction: reconsidering detachment. In C. Candea, J. Cook, C. Trundle, & T. Yarrow (Eds.), Detachment: essays on the limits of relational thinking (1-34). Manchester University Press
• Yarrow, T., & Venkatesan, S. (2012). Anthropology and Development: critical framings. In S. Venkatesan, & T. Yarrow (Eds.), Differentiating development : beyond an anthropology of critique (1-20). Berghahn Journals
• Yarrow, T. (2011). Kinship and the Core House: contested ideas of family and place in a Ghanaian resettlement township. In J. Edwards, & M. Petrovic-Steger (Eds.), Recasting anthropological knowledge : inspiration and social science (88-105). Cambridge University Press
• Yarrow, T. (2011). Maintaining Independence: the moral ambiguities of personal relations amongst Ghanaian Development Workers. In A. Fechter, & H. Hindman (Eds.), Inside the everyday lives of development workers : the challenges and futures of aidland. Kumarian Press
• Yarrow, T. (2010). Not knowing as knowledge: asymmetry between archaeology and anthropology. In D. Garrow, & T. Yarrow (Eds.), Archaeology and anthropology : understanding similarity, exploring difference (13-27). Oxbow
• Yarrow, T., & Garrow, D. (2010). Introduction: Archaeological Anthropology. In D. Garrow, & T. Yarrow (Eds.), Archaeology and anthropology : understanding similarity, exploring difference (1-12). Oxbow
• Yarrow, T. (2008). In Context: Meaning, Materiality and Agency in the Process of Archaeological Recording. In C. Knappett, & L. Malafouris (Eds.), Material agency : towards a non-anthropocentric approach (121-138). Springer Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-74711-8_7
• Yarrow, T. (2006). Perspective Matters: Traversing Scale through Archaeological Practice. In G. Lock, & B. Molyneaux (Eds.), Confronting Scale in Archaeology: Issues of Theory and Practice (77-88). Altamira Press
• Yarrow, T. (2006). Sites of Knowledge: different ways of knowing on an archaeological excavation. In M. Edgeworth (Ed.), Ethnographies of Archaeological Practice: Cultural Encounters, Material Transformations. AltaMira Press

Edited book

• Brown, H., Reed, A., & Yarrow, T. (Eds.). (2017). Meetings: Ethnographies of organizational process, bureaucracy and assembly. John Wiley and Sons
• Yarrow, T., Candea, M., Trundle, C., & Cook, J. (Eds.). (2015). Detachment: essays on the limits of relational thinking. Manchester University Press
• Venkatesan, S., & Yarrow, T. (Eds.). (2012). Differentiating Development: beyond an anthropology of critique. Berghahn Journals
• Garrow, D., & Yarrow, T. (Eds.). (2010). Archaeology and Anthropology: understanding similarity, exploring difference. Oxbow

Journal Article

• Candea, M., Heywood, P., Reed, A., & Yarrow, T. (in press). Ethnographies of interest: between enthusiasm and the instrumental. Current Anthropology,
• Yarrow, T. (2019). How Conservation Matters: ethnographic explorations of historic building renovation. Journal of Material Culture, 24(1), 3-21. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359183518769111
• Yarrow, T. (2018). Retaining character: heritage conservation and the logic of continuity. Social Anthropology, 26(3), 330-344. https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-8676.12532
• Yarrow, T. (2017). Remains of the Future: rethinking space and time of ruination through the Volta Resettlement Project, Ghana. Cultural Anthropology, 32(4), 566-591. https://doi.org/10.14506/ca32.4.06
• Brown, H., Reed, A., & Yarrow, T. (2017). Introduction: towards an ethnography of meeting. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 23(S1), 10-26. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12591
• Yarrow, T. (2017). Where Knowledge Meets: heritage expertise at the intersection of people, perspective, and place. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 23(S1), 95-109. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12596
• Yarrow, T. (2016). Negotiating Heritage and Energy Conservation: an ethnography of domestic renovation. The Historic Environment: Policy & Practice, 7(4), 340-351. https://doi.org/10.1080/17567505.2016.1253149
• Douglas-Jones, R., Hughes, J., Jones, S., & Yarrow, T. (2016). Science, value and material decay in the conservation of historic environments. Journal of Cultural Heritage, 21, 823-833. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.culher.2016.03.007
• Yarrow, T. (2015). Archaeology, Anthropology and the Stuff of Time. Archaeological Dialogues, 22(1), 31-36. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1380203815000070
• Adams, C., Douglas-Jones, R., Green, A., Lewis, Q., & Yarrow, T. (2014). Building with History: Exploring the Relationship between Heritage and Energy in Institutionally Managed Buildings. The Historic Environment: Policy & Practice, 5(2), 167-181. https://doi.org/10.1179/1756750514z.00000000053
• Yarrow, T., & Jones, S. (2014). 'Stone is stone': engagement and detachment in the craft of conservation masonry. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 20(2), 256-275. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12103
• Englund, H., & Yarrow, T. (2013). The Place of Theory: Rights, Networks, and Ethnographic Comparison. Social Analysis: The International Journal of Anthropology, 57(3), 132-149. https://doi.org/10.3167/sa.2013.570308
• Jones, S., & Yarrow, T. (2013). Crafting authenticity: An ethnography of conservation practice. Journal of Material Culture, 18(1), 3-26. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359183512474383
• Cooper, A., & Yarrow, T. (2012). "Age of Innocence": personal histories of the digging circuit. International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 16, 300-318
• Yarrow, T. (2008). Negotiating Difference: Discourses of Indigenous Knowledge and Development in Ghana. Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 31(2), 224-242. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1555-2934.2008.00023
• Yarrow, T. (2008). Life/History: personal narratives of development amongst NGO workers and activists in Ghana. Africa, 78(3), 334-358. https://doi.org/10.3366/e0001972008000211
• Yarrow, T. (2008). Paired Opposites: Dualism in Development and Anthropology. Critique of Anthropology, 28(4), 426-455
• Yarrow, T. (2006). "This is not the academic world of right and wrong": the obviation of truth through NGO documentary practice. Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, 6(1), 50-59
• Yarrow, T. (2003). Artefactual Persons: the Relational Capacities of Persons and Things in the Practice of Excavation. Norwegian Archaeological Review, 36(1), 65-73

Manual

• Yarrow, T. (in press). Retaining Character: conservation and the logic of continuity

Other (Print)

• Douglas-Jones, R., Hughes, J., Jones, S., & Yarrow, T. (2015). Growing Old Gracefully?