Adam Kuper

Education and early life Kuper was born in Johannesburg, He was a postgraduate student at King's College, Cambridge. From 1985 to 2008 he was a professor at Brunel University, where he was the first head of the Department of Human Sciences, and latterly head of the Anthropology Department. Kuper served as the first president of the European Association of Social Anthropology. He was a visiting professor at Boston University, 2011–14, and a Centennial Professor, London School of Economics, from 2013-14 where he still holds a visiting appointment.

In the early 1970s Kuper did fieldwork in Jamaica, on attachment to the National Planning Agency in the Office of the Prime Minister. However his main ethnographic focus continued to be the societies of Southern Africa, on which he has published several books. In 1973 he published a history of British social anthropology, and since then he has continued to study and publish on the intellectual history of anthropology, including critical studies on the idea of primitive society The Invention of primitive society: Transformations of an Illusion The Chosen Primate: Human Nature and Cultural Diversity Anthropology and Anthropologists: The Modern British School The Social Science Encyclopaedia Culture: The Anthropologists' Account Incest and Influence: The Private Life of Bourgeois England The Museum of Other People. From Colonial Acquisitions to Cosmopolitan Exhibitions

Awards and honours Kuper was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 2000

Retirement dispute In January 2009 it was revealed that Brunel had reneged on an agreement to let him stay until 2010. Instead, he was forcibly retired in late 2008, just after the census date for publications submitted to the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) had passed. Kuper responded by suing the university for breach of contract. In 2011, employment laws were changed to permit phased retirements past the age of 65. This was because of changes to the 2006 Employment (Age) Regulations making mandatory retirement imposed by the employer unlawful.

Personal life Kuper has lived in Muswell Hill for over 40 years.

Kuper married Jessica Sue Cohen (1944-2013) of Johannesburg in 1966 and had three children including Simon Kuper. The sociologist Leo Kuper and anthropologist Hilda Kuper were his uncle and aunt.