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.

Strong is Thomas Strong, lecturer in the department of anthropology at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. He has previously held teaching and/or research posts at the University of Helsinki, the University of California, San Francisco, the University of Wisconsin, and (oddly enough) the American Academy of Ophthalmology. His publications include essays on the symbolism of blood and body in the U.S. and elsewhere, new cross-disciplinary work on kinship, and ideas of culture loss and bodily detumescence amongst the Dano-speakers of Papua New Guinea's eastern highlands province. His on-going research in PNG concerns transformations in sociality, gender relations, and personhood following the mid-twentieth-century repudiation of the traditional men's cult in the upper Asaro valley. His other interests include 'brand' as an ethnographic and analytic concept, HIV/AIDS (especially in the U.S. gay male community), and celebrity/fame.