Following 25 years at the University of Manchester, where I was appointed Max Gluckman Professor of Social Anthropology in 1995, I moved in 1999 to Aberdeen, where I established the UK’s newest Department of Anthropology, as well as directing the University’s strategic research theme on ‘The North’ (2011-17).

I have carried out ethnographic fieldwork among Saami and Finnish people in Lapland, and have written on comparative questions of environment, technology and social organisation in the circumpolar North, as well as on the role of animals in human society, on issues in human ecology, and on evolutionary theory in anthropology, biology and history. From there, I went on to explore the links between environmental perception and skilled practice, with a view to replacing 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.

In my more recent research, I have pursued three lines of inquiry that emerged from my earlier work, concerning the dynamics of pedestrian movement, the creativity of practice, and the linearity of writing. These all came together in a project funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (2005-08), entitled ‘Explorations in the comparative anthropology of the line’.
I have subsequently taught and written on a series of issues on the interface between anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. From 2013 to 2018 I directed the project ‘Knowing From the Inside: Anthropology, Art, Architecture and Design’ (2013-18), with funding from the European Research Council. I retired from the University in 2018, but continue to research and write as an independent scholar.