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David Zeitlyn

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David Zeitlyn
David Zeitlyn
Born1958 (age 65–66)
Cambridge, England
Alma mater
Occupations
  • Anthropologist
  • Sociolinguist
  • Photo Historian
Notable work
Websitewww.mambila.info

David Zeitlyn, FRAI (born 1958) is a British anthropologist. He is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford, and a supernumerary-Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford. His research has concentrated on the Mambila people of Cameroon, endangered languages and Cameroonian photographers such as Samuel Finlak, Joseph Chila and the late Jacques Toussele. Working on anthropological archives has led him to write on the ethics of archiving fieldwork data, and he has helped revise the Association of Social Anthropologists (ASA) ethical guidelines for anthropology.[1][2]

Early life and education

David Zeitlyn was born in 1958 in Cambridge, England. He was educated at The Perse School, Cambridge. He studied physics and philosophy at Wadham College, Oxford, before converting to anthropology by taking an anthropology Masters degree at The London School of Economics and Political Science. He received his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in anthropology from the University of Cambridge in 1990 supervised by Esther Goody. His thesis was "Mambila Traditional Religion: Sua in Somié".[3].

Professional career

After a stipendiary postdoc, a Junior Rsearch fellowship, 1988-1991[4] at Wolfson College, Oxford Zeitlyn had a British Academy fellowship also at Wolfson 1992-1995[5]. Following that, he spent a brief spell as the inaugural IT officer at the Pitt Rivers Museum during which time he developed a networked catalog using a relational database system.[citation needed]

In 1995 Zeitlyn moved to the University of Kent at Canterbury as a Lecturer in Social Anthropology, in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology.[6]

By 2007 he was Professor of Anthropology there.[1]

In 2010 he moved to the University of Oxford as a part-time Professor of Social Anthropology.[7]

As well as his ongoing research in Cameroon mainly with Mambila People Zeitlyn has been involved in ways of using the Internet to make material available since before the web was invented.

His first internet publication used Gopher to make (probably) the first sound recordings of a non- Indo-European language available online.[8]

At the University of Kent Zeitlyn worked with Mike Fischer to develop the Centre of Social Anthropology and Computing (CSAC) on a variety of projects. These include the website (one of the first 400) originally at "lucy.ukc.ac.uk" and now archived at the internet archive (covering 1999-2019 - the earliest versions seem not to have survived).[citation needed]

The CSAC vision as developed over the years was to make a wide range of research materials available for others to be able to use in various ways. This started with teaching: they wanted students to be able to see more of what the teaching staff-as- researchers had dealt with and synthesised into the articles and books which were the staple stuff of reading lists. This turned into a large project Experience Rich Anthropology the results of which are still online[9]. This was discussed independently by Sarah Pink[10] and others[11] as well as by Zeitlyn himself[12]

In 1995 he was appointed as Hon. Editor of the RAI's bibliographic database, the "Anthropological Index Online" [13] and was concerned behind the scenes with some of the quiet, unseen and unacknowledged work to index and make work discoverable.Some of this was later discussed by Carocci and Earl=-Fraser.[2]

He also served for many years on the ESRC Resources Board [14] which was funding:

a) the Social Science Data archive (now renamed as the UK Data Archive at the University of Essex which included the Qualidata archive and

b) some of the development of eSocial Science.

This led to his attending a technology conference in Harvard when Linux was in its heyday and Richard Stallman was preaching his millenarian message about open source software. Provoked by Eric Redmond’s use of Marcel Mauss in his 'Cathedral and the Bazaar' piece (1997) (See The Cathedral and the Bazaar) he wrote a highly cited paper: "Gift economies in the development of open source software" that was in an early, formally-open, special issue of the journal 'Research Policy' [15]

His work on archives and ethics has led to some open access articles: "Archiving ethnography?"[16] and "For Augustinian archival openness and laggardly sharing" [17]

Following a workshop in Yaoundé, Cameroon in 2013 he helped found an online journal with two Cameroonian colleagues "Vestiges: Traces of Record"[18] This is peer reviewed and is published open access with no publishing fees. The journal is listed in DOAJ. ISSN: 2058-1963.

Honours and other notable activities

2003-4 he was elected to be the Evans-Pritchard Lecturer, All Souls College Oxford. See recording of lecture 1[19]

In 2021 (July-December) Zeitlyn was co-curator of an exhibition at the Fowler Museum at UCLA

"Photo Cameroon: Studio Portraiture 1970-1990s" co-curated with Erica Jones.[20][21]

Before that he had been the organiser/curator of 'Cameroon- faces and places: a photographic exhibition by two Cameroonian photographers'

1. Curated by Dr David Zeitlyn and David Reason, British Council, Yaoundé, January 2004

2. National Portrait Gallery, London in Summer 2005 curated by NPG staff as [22] This was part of "Africa’05".

His collaboration with the artist Tomás_Saraceno was reflected in the summer 2023 exhibition in the Serpentine Gallery London. See refs on the Saraceno page and the nggam du website.[23]

He was winner of the 2023 Curl Essay Prize awarded by the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.[24]

He is co-curator of an exhibtion at the Weston Library, Oxford, part of the Bodleian Library December 2024 - April 2025.[25]

Books

Monographs
  • Aroney, Michelle; Zeitlyn, David (2024). Divination Oracles Omens. Bodleian Library Press. ISBN 9781851246335.
  • Zeitlyn, David (2022). An Anthropological Toolkit: Sixty Useful Concepts. Berghahn. ISBN 9781800735354.
  • Zeitlyn, David (2020). Mambila Divination: Framing Questions, Constructing Answers. Routledge. ISBN 9781032174082.

From review of this monograph: "The book, with its exceptional ambition and thorough ethnography, is essential for all social scientists studying divination."[26]

Several reviews of this volume are linked from the VIMS 'Mama for Story' page[27]

  • Zeitlyn, David (1994). Sua in Somié: Mambila Traditional Religion, Collectanea Instituti Anthropos v. 41. Academia Verlag. ISBN 978-3883453750.

References

  1. ^ a b "Professor David Zeitlyn". Archived from the original on 7 October 2008.
  2. ^ a b Carocci, Max; Earl-Fraser, Helen (2018). "Terms in place and time: A case study from the Anthropological Index Online". History and Anthropology. 29 (4): 517–540. doi:10.1080/02757206.2017.1401535.
  3. ^ Zeitlyn, David (1990), Mambila Traditional Religion: Sua in Somié, Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository, doi:10.17863/CAM.16262
  4. ^ College Record 1989-90. Wolfson College, Oxford. p. 23 (4th page of JRFs).
  5. ^ College Record 1992-93. Wolfson College, Oxford. p. 17.
  6. ^ "Archived Kent Page for David Zeitlyn Feb 1996". Archived from the original on 14 February 1997.
  7. ^ "Annals: Departmental reports and staff listings. University of Oxford".
  8. ^ "Mambila Sound recording".
  9. ^ "Experience Rich Anthropology".
  10. ^ Pink, Sarah (2011). "Digital visual anthropology: Potentials and challenges". In Ruby, Jay (ed.). Made to be seen: Perspectives on the history of visual anthropology. Chicago. pp. 209–233. ISBN 9780226036632.
  11. ^ Dudley, Sandra; Petch, Alison (2002). "Using multi-media tools to teach anthropology: 'Pitt Rivers, Anthropology and Ethnography in the Nineteenth Century'". Journal of Museum Ethnography. 14: 14–23.
  12. ^ Zeitlyn, David (2004). "Lessons learnt from the Experience Rich Anthropology Project". In Dracklé, Dorle (ed.). Current Policies and Practices in European Social Anthropology Education. Volume 2, Learning Fields. Berghahn Books. pp. 85–96. ISBN 1-57181-564-3. Zeitlyn, David (2004). "The Experience Rich Anthropology project and the Computer Simulation of Mambila Divination". In Pourchez, Laurent (ed.). Cultural diversity and indigenous peoples: Oral, written expressions and new technologies (CD). UNESCO Publishing. ISBN 92-3-103939-3.
  13. ^ "Anthropological Index Online".
  14. ^ "Economic & Social Research Council Annual Report 2005-06" (PDF).
  15. ^ Zeitlyn, David (2003). "Gift economies in the development of open source software: anthropological reflections". Research Policy. 32 (7): 1287–1291. doi:10.1016/S0048-7333(03)00053-2.
  16. ^ Zeitlyn, David (2022). "Archiving ethnography? The impossibility and the necessity. Damned if we do, damned if we don't". Ateliers d'Anthropologie. 51.
  17. ^ Zeitlyn, David (2021). "For Augustinian archival openness and laggardly sharing: trustworthy archiving and sharing of social science data from identifiable human subjects". Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics. 6 (63): 736568. doi:10.3389/frma.2021.736568. PMC 8552885. PMID 34723067.
  18. ^ "Vestiges: Traces of Record".
  19. ^ "Evans-Pritchard Lecture".
  20. ^ "Photo Cameroon: Studio Portraiture, 1970s-1990s | Fowler Museum at UCLA".
  21. ^ Goodinson, Elena (27 July 2021). "Cameroon with a View". The Guardian.
  22. ^ "Cameroon – London".
  23. ^ "nggamdu.org".
  24. ^ "Curl Essay Prize Past Awards". 31 October 2008. Retrieved 30 September 2024.
  25. ^ "Oracles, Omens and Answers". Retrieved 22 October 2024.
  26. ^ Dianteill, E (2023). "Review of "Mambila Divination: Framing Questions, Constructing Answers", written by David Zeitlyn". International Journal of Divination and Prognostication. 4 (2): 167–170. doi:10.1163/25899201-bja10001.
  27. ^ "Mama for Story". 1996. Retrieved 20 October 2024.
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