I am a Research and Teaching Fellow in Creativity, Cognition and Material Culture and Tutor in archaeology, anthropology, and human evolution at Keble. Before coming to Oxford, I was a Balzan Research Associate in Cognitive Archaeology at the McDonald Institute, Cambridge University (2005-8), and a graduate student at Darwin College from 2000 to 2005. My research in the archaeology of mind is cross-disciplinary and besides teaching over a broad range of archaeological and anthropological courses I am also responsible for developing the Creativity research cluster at Keble. Creativity is one of a number of identified interdisciplinary research clusters being strongly supported within Keble. It brings together researchers from a range of disciplines including Archaeology, Anthropology, Neuroscience, Literature and Geography.
My primary research interests lie in the archaeology of mind, the philosophy and semiotics of material culture, and the anthropology of the brain-artefact interface. In recent years, I have been working, with Colin Renfrew, on the development of Material Engagement Theory (MET) and the research field of ‘neuroarchaeology’. The broad aim of my work has been to further our understanding of the constitutive intertwining of the mind with the material world by exploring the long-term implications and causal efficacy of innovation and material culture in the functional architecture and evolution of human intelligence.
