Richard Vokes

Richard Vokes is Professor of Anthropology and International Development at the University of Western Australia, and an elected Research Affiliate of the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Oxford. He holds a B.A. Hons. and an M.A. with Distinction in Social Anthropology from the University of Kent, and a D.Phil in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford. His research focuses primarily on the African Great Lakes region, especially on the societies of South-western Uganda, where he has been conducting ethnographic fieldwork since 2000. He has published extensively on this region, including on: new religious movements, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the history of photography, media and social change, and the anthropology of development (education, governance and infrastructure). He also works on African-Australians, eLearning, and the Anthropology of Antarctica. He has won numerous prizes and awards, including the Royal Anthropological Institute’s Curl Essay Prize, a Finalist Award in the African Studies Association’s Herskovits competition, and the Royal Anthropological Institute’s Sutasoma Prize. He has held the Evans-Pritchard Lectureship and two Visiting Fellowships at All Souls College, Oxford. He has secured competitive research funding from: the Australian Research Council, the British Institute in East Africa, the British Library, the Economic and Social Research Council (UK), the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Marsden Fund, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation (USA). He also conducts a wide range of consultancy and media work. He is President of the Australian Anthropological Society, Co-editor of the Journal of Eastern African Studies, and a Member of the Organising Committee for the Australia Social Sciences Week. And he has four children.