Ioan Myrddin Lewis

Ioan Myrddin Lewis FBA (30 January 1930 – 14 March 2014), He proceeded to St Catherine's College, Oxford, where he obtained a diploma in Anthropology in 1952 with the aid of a grant from the Nuffield Foundation, and a Bachelor of Letters in 1953. He studied under Franz Steiner and social anthropologist Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard, who was himself an authority on the Nuer and Azande people of South Sudan, as a graduate student – finishing with a doctorate in 1957.

Steiner was working on a multi-language bibliography on the Somali, Afar (Danakil), and Saho peoples, a project for the International African Institute. After his death, Lewis completed the task of bringing it to publication.

Career He was renowned internationally as the foremost scholar on Somali history and culture, on which he has published numerous articles and books. Zitelmann characterised him as "the doyen of 'Somali studies'".

Lewis taught at the University of Rhodesia. Returning to the United Kingdom, he lectured at Glasgow and UCL. He then proceeded to the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1969 as a professor, where he remained until his retirement in 1992. Somali and other oral poetry in the Horn of Africa; clan, nation, state building and failure in Somalia and beyond; types of Islam among the Somali and in sub-Saharan Africa; possession cults and ecstatic religions; last but not least taking position in general anthropology.

Lewis was not appreciated by the Somali President Siyad Barre (1969–1990), so he and his team were prevented from conducting a planned refugee survey in Somalia on behalf of the UNHCR.

His work was sometimes criticised by other Somali studies scholars as informed by a colonialist and patriarchal approach. Despite this, many aspects of Lewis' analysis of Somali society have remained prevalent in Somali studies from the 1960s until today.

He died on 14 March 2014 and was buried on the eastern side of Highgate Cemetery.

Selected bibliography Books

Journal articles