Professor of Social Anthropology brings a wealth of experience to his new role at Cambridge.

Professor Matei Candea has succeeded Professor Sian Lazar as Head of the Department of Social Anthropology, with effect from 1 October 2025.

Matei Candea is a professor of social anthropology at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow and Director of Studies at King's College. His research focuses on the nature, materiality, and politics of knowledge. He has studied biologists, judges, and schoolteachers at work in France, the UK, and South Africa, the ways in which interpersonal and environmental knowledge shapes identity in the rural Mediterranean, and the history of social theory.

Professor Candea has published widely including, most recently, Comparison in Anthropology: The Impossible Method (Cambridge University Press, 2019), a monograph on the history and theory of the comparative method. His new book Reason, Carnival and Honour: an Anthropology of Free Speech is forthcoming with Penguin in spring 2025.

Professor Candea first came to Cambridge in 1998 as an undergraduate in Archaeology and Anthropology. After completing his PhD in 2006, focused on identity, alterity and belonging on the island of Corsica, he was a lecturer in the Department of Social Anthropology until 2009. He then held teaching positions at the University of Durham (2009-2013) and as the Velux Visiting Professor at the University of Copenhagen (2014).

Since rejoining Cambridge in 2013, Professor Candea has served as editor of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (2013-2016) and was the Principal Investigator of a European Research Council Consolidator Grant on the comparative anthropology of free speech (2015-2021). In 2016, he was awarded the Pilkington Prize for teaching excellence. Drawing from his experience as Director of Undergraduate Education for the Department and academic project director for technology and teaching within the School of Humanities and Social Sciences he co-authored AI and Scholarship (2024), a manifesto and series of principles to question the use of generative AI in scholarship.

Professor Candea said: “Over the 27 years I have known it, this Department has been unfailingly fortunate in its Heads of Department. If we are in such a great place today it's in great part due to this long line of people who have been caring and canny, vigilant and imaginative. Each of them added their distinctive stone to the edifice, built up our community, brought it together and protected its distinctiveness and its independence. It’s a slightly daunting honour to follow in their footsteps, but at least I know where to look for inspiration!”

Professor Lazar, outgoing Head of the Department, said: “Matt will be an absolutely fabulous Head of Department. I hope he has as much fun with it as I did!”

The Department of Social Anthropology warmly thanks Professor Lazar for her leadership over the last four years.