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Staff profile

Overview

Dr Leo Hopkinson

Lecturer in Social Anthropology

Affiliations
AffiliationTelephone
Lecturer in Social Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology
Fellow of the Institute for Medical Humanities

Biography

I completed my PhD in social anthropology at the University of Edinburgh in 2019, before working in the anthropology department at the University of Edinburgh (2018-19), the University of Melbourne (2019), and the London School of Economics and Political Science (2019-2021). I came to Durham as a Lecturer in Social Anthropology in September 2021.

Much of my work has been with boxing communities in Ghana, Canada and Scotland, and with athletes moving between West Africa and Western Europe. I have also conducted research with care workers and third sector organizations about their experiences of lockdown and pandemic responses.

You can reach me at leo.hopkinson@durham.ac.uk

Research Summary

I am an anthropologist of boxing, care, hope, competition and violence. My research focuses on how athletes imagine and plan for the future in the context of unequal global sporting industries; the diverse forms that care takes in contexts of bodily breakdown and social strain; and the relationship between gender and sport. My work contributes to theoretical and empirical discussion across socio-cultural and medical anthropology, and sociology.

My book (Ring Dreams: care and hope in an Accra boxing gym, currently under review) examines how Accra boxers forge meaningful relationships through a sport which takes a lasting toll on their health, and explores the forms their hopes and aspirations take in a global industry often loaded against them.

Recently, my research has examined how competition shapes social relationships and people’s sense of self. I am interested in what diverse forms of competition share – from competitions in sport, to those occurring in workplaces, religious spaces, markets, economic and development programs and elsewhere.

I have also recently become interested in the intersections between anthropology and the neurosciences, particularly in relation to Traumatic Brain Injuries (sometimes known as concussions) in sport. I am developing a project on emerging understandings of the relationships between sport and neuro-degenerative disease, and how this emergent knowledge is re-shaping dynamics of responsibility, care and profit in sporting industries.

Research Themes
  • Boxing
  • Sport
  • Care
  • Ethics and Morality
  • Masculinity
  • Place and Belonging
  • Hope and Aspiration
  • Competition
  • Anthropology/Neuroscience

Publications

Chapter in book

Journal Article

Supervision students

Oliver Keynes

PhD Student