Professor Joel Robbins FBA
- Fellow type
- UK Fellow
- Year elected
- 2026
- Subjects
- Anthropology, Geography
- Sections
- Theology and Religious Studies
Summary
Joel Robbins studied anthropology at Grinnell College (AB), and the University of Virginia (MA, PhD). He taught at Reed College and at the University of California, San Diego before moving to the University of Cambridge in 2013. Much of his work over the last thirty years has been devoted to the study of religion. In particular, he has helped to develop the anthropological study of Christianity (once a largely neglected topic in the discipline) and the study of global Pentecostalism.
More recently, he has been exploring possibilities for dialogue between anthropology and theology (about which he published a monograph in 2020). He also has a long-standing interest in the anthropology of ethics, values, and radical cultural change.
His primary fieldwork has been in Papua New Guinea, based on which he has published a monograph and numerous articles and edited collections on key topics of regional and wider disciplinary debate around such issues as exchange, leadership, modernity, opacity of mind, and the nature of the good.
Among his current projects is the development of an anthropological approach to the study of the nature of values and their role in social life. He was co-editor of the journal Anthropological Theory for twelve years and is editor or co-editor of several book series. He has been the elected Chair of the Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania and the President of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion. He has also held visiting positions at universities and institutes in Brazil, China, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Taiwan, and the UK.