Welcome to Mark Hobart's academic forum. Originally I was trained as a social anthropologist specialized in South East Asia with an interest in theoretical and philosophical issues in the human sciences. Subsequently I moved into Media and Cultural Studies and founded the Centre for Global Media and Communication, SOAS, where I am now Emeritus Professor of Critical Media & Cultural Studies. 

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Criticalia is concerned with challenging the presuppositions widely adopted in the humanities, which remain remarkably Eurocentric. Criticalia aims to explore a critical approach in a strong sense. So doing requires going beyond conventional critical styles of analysis, which generally question the subjects and objects of inquiry, but treat the inquirers as mysteriously above and beyond interrogation. A consequence is subtly to hegemonize the paradigms, theories and methods of inquiry by naturalizing and rendering them immune to critical questioning by others. Criticalia examines critically how the human sciences—especially Anthropology, Cultural, Media and Performance Studies broadly understood—represent the non-Western world. The hope is to encourage a recognition of how different peoples understand and live in the worlds around them and how, reflexively, it invites us to question the questioners.