Category: People

James Woodburn is the world’s leading theorist on egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies; he has just returned from visiting the Hadza people of Tanzania.

After carrying out two years of field research on a ‘cargo cult’ in New Britain, Papua New Guinea in the late eighties, Harvey Whitehouse developed a theory of ‘modes of religiosity’ that has been the subject of extensive critical evaluation and testing by anthropologists, historians, archaeologists, and cognitive scientists. In recent years, he has focused…

Charles Whitehead was creative director of an advertising agency for twenty years before gaining his PhD in social anthropology at University College London. He teaches anthropology to cognitive science students at the University of Westminster, and is currently involved in brain imaging research on pretend play at the Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience. His research…

David Wengrow lectures at the Institute of Archaeology.

Dr Ivan Tacey is a lecturer in Anthropology and Criminology at the University of Plymouth. His research interests include hunter-gatherers, animism, environmental relations, globalization, place making, and violence. His long-term research with Batek hunter-gatherers of Peninsular Malaysia explored how interconnectivity, environmental change and socio-political marginalization have led to realignments of these indigenous peoples’ animistic practices…

Thea Skaanes is Managing Curator of the UNESCO collections at the Moesgaard Museum, Denmark. The author of many scientific papers, she has conducted extensive field research into the material culture, social life and cosmology of the Hadza hunter-gatherers of Tanzania. Her writing and lecturing has been described as ‘dripping from blood, taboo, darkness, ancestors and…

Stephen Lyon has lived and worked in Pakistani Punjabi villages and cities off and on since 1982 and has carried out longitudinal research in the same northern Punjabi village for more than 20 years. His research integrates social network analysis, context coding, narrative thick description, and different varieties of quantitative and audiovisual data to address…

Gary Lupyan is currently an Associate Professor of Psychology at University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2007, he received his PhD in Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience from Carnegie Mellon University and conducted postdoctoral work at Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include understanding how human cognition is augmented by language, the effects of…

Ana Lopes gained her first degree in Anthropology at the University of East London. She completed a Masters degree at UCL, and a Ph.D at UEL on action research in the sex industry. She was one of the founders of the International Union of Sex Workers. She is currently teaching anthropology at UEL.

Bruce Parry has lived with tribal people the world over and has much to share. In his talks, Bruce reveals what it is like to live with people who exist in a world without leaders, shaman or even competition. He shows us the tools such people use to maintain societal balance, and most significantly, how…