Richard Vokes

I am Professor of Anthropology and International Development at the University of Western Australia; Research Affiliate of Oxford University, and; Research Associate of the Western Australian Museum Boola Bardip. As an Oxford University-trained anthropologist with 24 years’ fieldwork experience in Africa, Antarctica and Australia, I have led complex heritage management and development projects, around the world. I have worked with many community representative bodies, at the highest levels of government, and for international bodies including the UN. I have extensive legal experience, across multiple jurisdictions. I have authored 300+ academic books, journal articles, research reports, heritage surveys, briefings, and policy papers. I am former President of the Australian Anthropological Society, and I have been recently appointed as a Director of the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI).

My academic research has won numerous prizes and awards, including the RAI's Curl Essay Prize, a Finalist Award in the African Studies Association’s Herskovits competition, and the RAI's Sutasoma Prize. I have held the Evans-Pritchard Lectureship and two Visiting Fellowships at All Souls College, Oxford, and I have 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).

I am currently leading - with Derek Peterson, Nelson Abiti, and Edgar Taylor - the major research, digitisation and exhibition project: The Unseen Archive of Idi Amin. For more information, click here.

Many of my academic publications can be downloaded here:

https://uwa.academia.edu/RichardVokes

Anthropology and Heritage in Africa, Antarctica and Australia; Experimental Ethnographic Methods; Development and Human Security around the Indian Ocean Rim.