Tim Ingold - biographical and research overview¹

Tim Ingold is Professor Emeritus of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. He had previously spent 25 years at the University of Manchester, where he was appointed Max Gluckman Professor of Social Anthropology in 1995. A key aspect of Ingold’s work continues to lie in his critical exploration of the links between environmental perception and skilled practice. In this he has aimed to replace traditional models of genetic and cultural transmission with a relational approach focusing on the growth of embodied skills of perception and action within social and environmental contexts of development. Only some years later, in 1988, would Ingold eventually recognise that the only way forward was to seek a rapprochement with a biology that was developmental rather than evolutionary in orientation. Since 2002, most of Ingold’s work has been situated at the interface between anthropology, art, and architecture.