Michael Lambek

Michael Joshua Lambek (born 11 June 1950) is a Canadian anthropologist who serves as professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto Scarborough. He is a specialist in the anthropology of religion. Lambek is known for his works on Mayotte and its people.

Selected publications Human Spirits: A Cultural Account of Trance in Mayotte (1981) Knowledge and Practice in Mayotte: Local Discourses of Islam, Sorcery and Spirit Possession (1993) Tense Past (edited with Paul Antze, 1996) Ecology and the Sacred (edited with Ellen Messer, 2001) The Weight of the Past: Living with History in Mahajanga, Madagascar (2002) Illness and Irony (edited with Paul Antze, 2003) A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion (2nd ed. 2008) Ordinary Ethics: Anthropology, Language, and Action (ed. 2010) Island in the Stream: An Ethnographic History of Mayotte (2018) Concepts and Persons (2021) Behind the Glass: The Villa Tugendhat and Its Family (2022) Cohabiting with Spirits: The Biography of a Marriage in Mayotte (2025)