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Department of Social Anthropology

 

Professor James LaidlawThe Division of Social Anthropology is delighted to announce the election of the eighth William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology, to succeed Professor Henrietta Moore, who was preceded in turn by Professors Marilyn Strathern, Ernest Gellner, Jack Goody, Meyer Fortes, J. H. Hutton, and T. C. Hodson.

James Laidlaw has taught for many years at the University of Cambridge, where he currently holds a Personal Chair and is a Fellow of King's College. He will take up the William Wyse Professorship in October 2016.


James Laidlaw’s research interests include the anthropology of ethics, religion and ritual, civil society, and the relationships between social anthropology and philosophy and between social anthropology and cognitive science.  His primary fieldwork has been in India and more recently in Taiwan.  His current research focuses on issues of ethical self-cultivation, democratisation and citizenship in a globalizing Taiwanese Buddhist Movement.