Michael Carrithers


Michael Barnes Carrithers, FBA is an anthropologist and academic. Since 1992, he has Professor of Anthropology at Durham University.

Career

Born in 1945, Michael Barnes Carrithers graduated from Wesleyan University in 1967 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, and went on to complete a Master of Arts degree there four years later. He was awarded a doctorate by the University of Oxford in 1978 for his thesis entitled "The forest-dwelling monks of Lanka: an historical and anthropological study". After lecturing at the London School of Economics and Oxford, he joined the staff at Durham University in 1982 as a lecturer in anthropology; he was promoted to senior lecturer in 1987, reader in 1989 and professor of anthropology in 1992.
According to his British Academy profile, Carrithers's research focuses on "The Buddha and Buddhism in Sri Lanka; Jains in India; German commemoration of the Twentieth Century; reasoning and cogency in anthropology; rhetoric culture theory; ethnography as a source of philosophy".

Awards and honours

In 2015, Carrithers was elected a Fellow of the British Academy, the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.

Selected publications