Who we are

  • Abbey Page

    Abbey Page trained as an anthropologist, first at the University of Durham for her BA in Social and Biological Anthropology and then MSc in Medical Anthropology at University College London. She completed her PhD in Biological Anthropology in 2016, specialising in the cooperative childrearing, health and reproduction of a hunter-gatherer population in the Philippines called the…

  • Adar Charlton

    Raised in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada, Charlton has been a sessional lecturer in the English Department at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatchewan, Canada. She obtained a BA Arts Hons in English and Music and MA in English Literature from Queen’s University, Ontario, Canada. Her PhD on Anishinaabe Literature from Northern Ontario from the University of Saskatchewan…

  • Alan Cohen

    Alan Cohen is part of a rare species, a marxist who has had a life-long interest in shamanism and the so-called ‘mystical’ traditions of humanity. Long ago, in 1976, he was awarded a Bachelor of Letters at Oxford for his thesis, ‘The Small Grey Bird, a study of forms and patterns in shamanism and ecstatic…

  • Algis Kuliukas

    Algis Kuliukas is currently a PhD student at University of Western Australia in Perth, studying the evolution of human bipedality. Specifically he is investigating the role that water might have played in the early adoption of facultative bipedalism in hominids in the late Miocene. This apparently rather modest idea is, in fact, loaded with controversy…

  • Alice Rudge

    Alice is a postdoctoral researcher at UCL Institute of Advanced Studies. She began working with Batek hunting and gathering people in Malaysia in 2014. Her work with the Batek is based on on insights from long-term fieldwork, and focuses on the relationship between sound, aesthetics and ethics. She makes use of an interdisciplinary approach that…

  • Alicia Colson

    An archaeologist and ethnohistorian working with computing scientists Dr Alicia Colson collaborates with indigenous peoples, NGOs and governments in Canada, UK, US, and Antigua to understand our pasts. She trained at the Institute of Archaeology (UCL) and Southampton University (Depts of Archaeology & Computing Science). She obtained her PhD from McGill University under the late…

  • Amy Bobeda

    to follow

  • Ana Lopes

    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.

  • Andrew Fowler

    Andrew Fowler is a field primatologist. He has studied chimpanzees in the Gashaka-Gumti National Park, Nigeria, under the supervision of Professor Volker Sommer (University College London). His research interests include the origins of language, chimpanzee nesting behaviour and the politics of primate conservation.

  • Ann Gollifer

    Ann Gollifer is a British-Guyanese visual artist. She moved to Gaborone, Botswana in 1985 where she worked for the Department of National Museum and Monuments until 1987 and then entered the printing and publishing sector. She was mentored by Alec Campbell then Director of the National Museum and Art Gallery, Gaborone and also by Sandy Grant,…

  • Anthony Auerbach

    Anthony Auerbach is an artist.

  • Audax Mabulla

    Dr Audax Mabulla is Field Coordinator of the Archaeology Unit, University of Dar es Salaam and one of Tanzania’s leading archaeologists. His major research interest is in the area of the Lake Eyasi Basin, where the present-day Hadza hunter-gatherers live. In addition to his scholarly research, he is an active champion of the land rights…

  • Brian Hare

    Brian Hare is a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University. He researches the evolution of cognition by studying both humans, our close relatives the primates (especially bonobos and chimpanzees), and species whose cognition converged with our own (primarily domestic dogs) . He founded and co-directs the Duke Canine Cognition Center.

  • Brian Morris

    Brian Morris is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Goldsmith’s College, University of London. Recent books by him include Kropotkin: Politics Of Community (2004, Humanity Press), Insects And Human Life (2004, Berg) and Religion And Anthropology (2006, CUP).

  • Bridget Anderson

    Bridget Anderson

  • Bruce Parry

    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…

  • Bruce Rimell

    Bruce Rimell is an artist, born in Swindon, but now living in Shipley. He has said of the mythological influences on his work: ‘I’ve been reading mythology since I was a kid and it has become the ruling passion of my life, contributing a great deal of inspiration to my art. For me, the technical…

  • Camilla Power

    Camilla Power is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Dept of Anthropology at UCL, and was Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of East London. She completed her Ph.D. in 2001 at UCL under supervision of Leslie Aiello. Camilla has published many articles on the evolutionary origins of ritual, gender and the use of…

  • Camille Barbagallo

    Before migrating to London in 2005, Camille Barbagallo lived and worked in Australia and was active in trade unions, student movements and in social movements that focused on ending the mandatory detention of asylum seekers and campaigns to close the refugee camps. Since 2017, she has been one of the Sociological Review Fellows, undertaking work…

  • Cathryn Townsend

    I have been doing anthropological research on hunter-gatherer societies since 2009, when I travelled to the Democratic Republic of Congo to work with the Mbuti, who were made famous for their egalitarian social order by Colin Turnbull’s popular ethnography The Forest People. I went on to complete a PhD thesis at UCL under the supervision…

  • Charles Whitehead

    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…

  • Chris Knight

    Professor Chris Knight is at the Department of Anthropology, University College London. He gained his Ph.D. from the University of London with a thesis on Claude Lévi-Strauss’ four-volume Mythologiques. His first book, Blood Relations: Menstruation and the origins of culture (1991), outlined a new theory of human evolution. Since then, his main research interest has…

  • Chris Stringer

    Chris Stringer is Merit Researcher in Human Origins at the London Natural History Museum. His early research concentrated on the relationship of Neanderthals and early modern humans in Europe, but his current research interests extend as far back as Homo habilis and as far geographically as China and Australia. He has been closely involved in…

  • Colette Berbesque

    Colette Berbesque is an evolutionary ecologist who has lived and studied with the Hadza hunter-gatherers of Tanzania in their own environment, drawing on their way of life to inform our understanding of human evolution. She lectures at Roehampton University.

  • Daiara Tukano

    Daiara Tukano, of the Tukano indigenous nation of the Upper Rio Negro, is an indigenous activist and artist. With a Masters Degree in human rights at the University of Brasilia, she is a researcher on the right to memory and truth of indigenous peoples. She is an independent communicator and coordinator of Radio Yandê, the…

  • Darcia Narvaez

    Darcia Narvaez is professor of psychology emerita at the University of Notre Dame. She employs a lifespan, interdisciplinary approach to studying evolved morality, child development and human flourishing. She blogs for Psychology Today (“Moral Landscapes”) and hosts the webpage EvolvedNest.org.

  • Dario Novellino

    Dr. Dario Novellino received his Master in Social Anthropology from the School of Oriental and African Studies and his doctorate in environmental anthropology from the University of Kent where he is presently affiliated as a research fellow. Recently, he has completed a Wenner-Gren funded research on “Local Knowledge Hybridization in the Context of Conservation Development…

  • Dasa Bombjakova

    Daša Bombjaková is a post-doctoral research fellow at the Comenius University Bratislava and a chief state adviser at the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic on science and education evaluation. Recently, she has been elected President of the Slovak Association of Social Anthropologists – major aim of this NGO is…

  • Dave Robinson

    Dave Robinson lectures in anthropology at the University of East London. He is a specialist in the social life and traditions of the Maori people of New Zealand.

  • David Graeber

    David Graeber is an American anthropologist and anarchist has been involved in social and political activism, including the protests against the World Economic Forum in New York City in 2002 and Occupy Wall Street. He accepted a professorship at the London School of Economics in 2013. In November 2011, Rolling Stone magazine credited Graeber with…

  • David Papineau

    David Papineau works as Professor of the Philosophy of Science at King’s College London and also Professor of Philosophy at City University of New York. He was elected President of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science for 1993-5, of the Mind Association for 2009-10 and of the Aristotelian Society for 2013-4. He has…

  • David Wengrow

    David Wengrow lectures at the Institute of Archaeology.

  • Denise Arnold

    Denise Y. Arnold, an Anglo-Bolivian anthropologist (PhD, UCL 1988), is currently Senior Research Fellow at UCL, and directs the Instituto de Lengua y Cultura Aymara in La Paz, Bolivia. Her publications and co-publications in English include Situating the Andean colonial experience: Ayllu tales of history and hagiography in the Time of the Spanish (ARC-Humanities, Univ.…

  • Dor Shilton

    Dor Shilton is a PhD student in the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas in Tel Aviv University. He studies the interactive roots of music and the relationship between participatory musicking and social organization.

  • Duncan Stibbard Hawkes

    Duncan Stibbard Hawkes is an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Durham. He conducts field research with a Tanzanian population called the Hadza, who traditionally subsisted through hunting and gathering. His research has focussed on the motives underlying hunting, foraging, and food-sharing. He’s about to start a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship investigating the ecological factors…

  • Elena Fejdiova

    Elena Fejdiova completed her PhD. in Social Anthropology at the University of East London with Camilla Power and Mark Jamieson. In her research she looks at women’s collective rituals, bonding and reciprocity. She is also interested in researching women’s networks and cooperation.

  • Estelle Orrelle

    Estelle Orrelle has a background in history and Near Eastern Archaeology and has taken part in many prehistoric excavations in Israel. Her Ph.D. dissertation (now being completed at the University of East London) focuses on the iconography of the earliest figurines to appear after the end of the Ice Ages in the Neolithic of the…

  • Felix Padel

    Felix Padel is an activist-oriented anthropologist educated in Oxford and Delhi Universities. His main books include ‘Sacrificing People: Invasions of a Tribal Landscape’ (1995/2010), ‘Out of This Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel’ (with Samarendra Das, 2010) and ‘Ecology, Economy: Quest for a Socially Informed Connection’ (with Ajay Dandekar and Jeemol Unni, 2013).…

  • Frederique Darragon

    Frederique Darragon is an economist by training who has spent many years in rural China and Tibet. Since 1998, she has been researching the extraordinary ancient skyscrapers that are found in Kham. She is Professor Honoris at Causa at Sichuan University.

  • Gabriel Levy

    Gabriel Levy is a political activist and historian of science with a special interest in the history of climate science.

  • Gabriella Kountourides

    Gabriella Kountourides is a DPhil student in biological anthropology and uses an interdisciplinary approach to understand the menstrual cycle, drawing on both anthropological and immunological explanations. She began her academic career studying zoology at the University of Leeds and did her masters in human evolution and behaviour at UCL. She then worked as a science…

  • Gary Lupyan

    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…

  • Geoff Hughes

    Geoffrey Hughes is a lecturer in anthropology at the University of Exeter and author of Affection and Mercy: Kinship, Islam and the Politics of Marriage in Jordan.

  • George Kenny

    Knowledge Keeper, Elder, Lifetime of knowledge of Lac Seul First Nation topography and protocols, including local language,  former journalist and editor at Wawatay Newspaper (https://wawataynews.ca/list-newspaper ), Translator for Oji-Cree and Anishinaabe First Nations Author of the book Indians don’t cry (1977/1982/2014) and the play October Stranger (1978). Currently completing a Masters thesis in cultural anthropology at…

  • Graeme Warren

    Graeme Warren is a Professor in the School of Archaeology, University College Dublin, Ireland, where he has worked since 2002. He is a specialist in the archaeology of hunter-gatherers, with a particular research interest in the Mesolithic of Europe. His major research projects have been in Ireland and Scotland.

  • Guilherme Orlandini Heurich

    Guilherme Orlandini Heurich has worked with Amerindian groups for the past 13 years, more intensively with the Araweté in Eastern Amazonia. He has a PhD in Social Anthropology from the Museu Nacional (Brazil) is currently the British Academy Newton International Fellow at the Department of Anthropology at UCL.

  • Harvey Whitehouse

    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…

  • Heide Goettner-Abendroth

    Heide Goettner-Abendroth is a mother and a grandmother. She earned her Ph.D. in philosophy of science at the University of Munich where she lectured for ten years (1973-1983).

  • Helen Cornish

    Dr Helen Cornish is an anthropologist at Goldsmiths College interested in the practices and politics of history-making and how these are navigated through official and informal sources, including the imagination. My research has focused on how modern witches and Wiccans in the UK have navigated challenges to claims about the past, and one key site has been…

  • Helen Nde

    Helen Nde is a Cameroonian-born researcher, writer and artist currently based in Atlanta, GA. She received a bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of Buea, Cameroon and a master’s degree in Public Health with a focus on Epidemiology from Loyola University Chicago. She currently curates Mythological Africans, an online space for…