Richard Vokes

I am Professor of Anthropology and International Development at the University of Western Australia; Research Affiliate of Oxford University; Trustee and Director of the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI); Research Associate of the Western Australian Museum Boola Bardip; President of the Oxford University Society of Western Australia, and; Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. I have been recently elected to a Visiting Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, with the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (for Michaelmas 2025).

I am former President of the Australian Anthropological Society (AAS), and; Editor of the Journal of Eastern African Studies (JEAS). 

As an Oxford University-trained anthropologist with 30 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. 

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, the Stan Perron Charitable Foundation (Australia), and the Wenner-Gren Foundation (USA).

My books and collections include: Haunting Images (with Benjamin R. Smith, 2008); Ghosts of Kanungu: Fertility, Secrecy and Exchange in the Great Lakes of East Africa (2009); Routes and Traces: Anthropology, Photography and the Archive (with Marcus Banks, 2010); Photography in Africa (2012); The NRM Regime and the 2016 Ugandan Elections (with Sam Wilkins, 2016); Chronotopes of Media in Sub-Saharan Africa (with Katrien Pype, 2018); Media and Development (2018); Photography and African Futures (with Darren Newbury, 2018); Elections in Museveni’s Uganda (with Sam Wilkins, 2018); Photographies in Africa in the Digital Age (2019); Shifting States (with Alison Dundon, 2021); The Unseen Archive of Idi Amin (with Derek Peterson, 2021); Transition, Transformation, and the Politics of the Future in Uganda (with Sam Wilkins, 2023); (Re)Sounding Images (with Paul Basu and Haidy Geismar, forthcoming 2025); Handbook of the Indian Ocean (with Zulfikar Hirji, forthcoming 2025), and; Africa in Australia: The Living Legacies of Collections (forthcoming, 2025).

Many of my academic publications can be downloaded here.

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