Biography
My profession is that of a social anthropologist. I received my two doctorates from the University of Oxford and the University of London based on two dissertations (one on social organization and the other on ritual and belief)resulting from field research I carried out with my wife, Maxine, in East Timor, a country that at the time (in 1966-1967) was known as "Portuguese Timor". My interests are in the politics, kinship systems, oral literatures, and ritual life of the people living in East Timor as well as in neighboring Indonesia, where I have also carried out field research, on the island of Flores. I have written five books, Tetum Ghosts and Kin, Structural Analysis in Anthropology, A Maternal Religion, Kinship and Religion in Eastern Indonesia, and (with Margaret A. Gwynne) Cultural Anthropology. I have also edited another book, Ritual and Belief: Readings in the Anthropology of Religion, and additionally have published articles in the American Anthropologist, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society, various other professional journals, and several anthropological anthologies. I have received research grants from the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the United States Institute of Peace, the American Philosophical Society, and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. In 1997 I was a resident scholar at the Rockefeller Foundation Center at Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio in Italy and in 2004-2005 I received a Fulbright Award to carry out field research and teach in the National University in East Timor. In 2005 The State University of New York and Stony Brook University conferred upon me both the Chancellor's and the President's Award For Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities.
The particulars of my field research are as follows:
2005 East Timor: seven months
2001 East Timor: six weeks
1999 East Timor: three weeks
1999 Australia (East Timorese refugees: one week
1989 Portugal (East Timorese refugees): several weeks
1986 Western Flores: two months
1983 Western Flores: five months
1966-1967 East Timor: nineteen months