Emma Tarlo is an anthropologist and writer who specialises in taking intimate everyday subjects such as dress, hair or food and exploring how they are entangled in complex global relationships. Her books include Clothing Matters, which focuses on the dynamics of dress in colonial and postcolonial India and won the prestigious Coomaraswamy Prize in 1998; Unsettling Memories, which recounts the tales of displacement and sterilisation experienced by Delhi’s poor in the mid 1970s at the time of the Emergency; and most recently Visibly Muslim: Fashion, Politics, Faith, which enters the world of contemporary Islamic fashion in Britain and explores what motivates young Muslims to dress the way they do in an environment which is often hostile. Emma is a Professor of Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London, recipient of a Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust, and regularly gives public lectures worldwide as well as contributing to BBC Radio programmes and news articles. Her most recent book, Entanglement: The Secret Lives of Hair, is published by Oneworld and won the Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing.
Emma is currently working on a new book project, for publication in early 2024.