15h Annual Professor Dame Marilyn Strathern Lecture
Dr Ludovic Coupaye (UCL)
The 15th Annual Professor Dame Marilyn Strathern Lecture will be given by Dr Ludovic Coupaye in the Auditorium, Pembroke College (Trumpington Street), at 17:00 on Tuesday 25th November 2025.
Dr Coupaye will be speaking on the anthropology of technicity. The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception in the Auditorium Foyer (18:30-19:30) and an optional dinner (sign-up information to come later).
Dr Coupaye conducted his fieldwork among the Nyamikum Abelam of Papua New Guinea. His interlocutors carefully cultivate large yams which they handle as art objects. The subsequent monograph, Growing Artefacts, Displaying Relationships: Yams, Art and Technology amongst the Nyamikum Abelam of Papua New Guinea (Berghahn, 2013), pioneered a non-anthropocentric approach to the study of artefacts. Since then, Coupaye’s work has centred artefacts, contributing to the anthropology of technicity and technical objects that brings Francophone and Anglophone anthropology into dialogue.
The Strathern Lecture is organised annually by the student-led Cambridge University Social Anthropology Society (CUSAS), which is supported by the Department.