The Guardian profiles anthropologist Melissa Leach
The Guardian today features an article on University of Sussex anthropologist Melissa Leach and her advocacy of ethnographic research methods for helping to understand contemporary problems, including especially those involving science and society in developing nations.
It certainly sounds like Dr. Leach has had an interesting career. The STEPS Centre, however, sounds very similar to a large number of academically affiliated research institutes around the globe that have sprung up over the past 15 years or so; it’s major difference perhaps being that it is headed by an anthropologist.
What interested me more (as a non anthropologist) in this piece was the way in which having a family has aided Dr. Leach’s research. I’d be interested to know if there are others on here that have had similar experiences, or if there are notable ethnographic texts where the research undertaken was significantly furthered by the presence of the researcher’s children. It seems to me that this may be a very unique facet of anthropology as a discipline.