Roy Ellen

Roy Frank Ellen, FBA FRAI (born 1947) is a British professor of anthropology and human ecology, with a particular interest in ethnobiology and the cultural transmission of ethnobiological knowledge.

Ellen is a professor of environmental anthropology and ethnobiology at the University of Kent at Canterbury. He studied anthropology at the London School of Economics and Leiden and is most known for his extensive fieldwork in East Indonesia with the Nuaulu people of Seram. Ellen started his fieldwork in the early 1970s and has remained active in the field of environmental anthropology through publishing, teaching and field research. Throughout Ellen's career, especially in his published works there is a reoccurring theme and emphasis on the transmission of cultural knowledge as well as the importance of the history and knowledge of indigenous people.

The British Academy in a 2003 Review describes him, his work, and his contribution to society as follows:

"His work is at the forefront of ecological anthropology. He has recently embarked on a series of major studies of indigenous knowledge and of the consequences of deforestation in parts of Indonesia and in Brunei. He has also contributed notably to work on anthropological history and method."

Primary research area

Ellen has been carrying out ethnobiological fieldwork in eastern Indonesia since the early 1970s, working variously with the Nuaulu people of Seram (with whom he did his doctoral dissertation); on the islands of Sulawesi, Gorom, Seram Laut, Banda and Ambon-Lease; plus some addition fieldwork into the social impacts of logging at Brunei (1991–1994).

Personal life Ellen is married.

Brief bibliography of works

Books published

Ellen's published books include:

ELLEN, Roy (1978) Nuaulu settlement and ecology. The environmental relations of an eastern Indonesian community. No.83 Martinus Nijhoff: The Hague. ELLEN, Roy (1982) Environment, subsistence and system: the ecology of small-scale social formations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ELLEN, Roy (1993) The cultural relations of classification: an analysis of Nuaulu animal categories from central Seram. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. ELLEN, Roy (1993) Nuaulu ethnozoology : a systematic inventory. Canterbury: Centre for Social Anthropology and Computing, University of Kent at Canterbury in co-operation with the Centre of South-East Asian Studies. ELLEN, Roy (1993) On the edge of the Banda zone: past and present in the social organisation of a Moluccan trading network. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press ELLEN, Roy (2006) The categorical impulse: essays in the anthropology of classifying behaviour. Oxford: Berghahn. ELLEN, Roy (2012) Nuaulu religious practices: the frequency and reproduction of rituals in a Moluccan society. Leiden: KITLV.

Books edited

ELLEN, Roy & BURNHAM, P.H (Eds) (1979) Social and ecological systems. Association of Social Anthropologists Monograph No.18. London: Academic Press. ELLEN, Roy & REASON, D (Eds) (1979) Classifications in their social context. London: Academic Press ELLEN, Roy (Ed) (1984) Ethnographic research: a guide to general conduct. Association of Social Anthropologists Research Methods Series No.1. London: Academic Press. ELLEN, Roy, Gellner, E. et al. (Ed) (1988) Malinowski between two worlds: the Polish roots of an anthropological tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ELLEN, Roy & WATSON, C.W. (Eds) (1993) Understanding witchcraft and sorcery in Southeast Asia. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press ELLEN, Roy & FUKUI, K. (Eds) (1996) Redefining nature: ecology, culture and domestication. Oxford: Berg ELLEN, Roy; PARKES, P; & BICKER, A (Eds) (2000) Indigenous environmental knowledge and its transformations. Amsterdam: Harwood ELLEN, Roy (Ed) (2006) Ethnobiology and the science of humankind. Journal Royal Anthropological Institute Special Issue. Oxford: Blackwell.