Professor David Sneath

David Sneath studied Sociology and Social Anthropology at the University of Ulster, and completed his Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge in 1986. His doctoral research was a study of social, economic and political change among Mongolian pastoralists in Inner Mongolia, China, where he did fieldwork in 1986 and 1987-88. He remained in Cambridge to do postdoctoral research on environment and society in Inner Asia, and held a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the department of Social Anthropology. He carried out extended pieces of fieldwork with pastoralists in Mongolia in the 1990s and returns regularly to Mongolia and other parts of Inner Asia. In 1998 he took up a Lectureship in Anthropology and Development, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford and in January 2000 returned to Cambridge to lecture in the department of Social Anthropology where he served as Head of Department 2009-12. His research interests include the past and present of political economy in Inner Asia, pastoralism, land-use and the environment and post-socialist transformation. He is the Director of the Cambridge University Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit, and the co-editor of the journal Inner Asia. Dr Sneath is Director of Studies in Social Anthropology for Corpus Christi College.

Research Interests

Economic, social and political change in Mongolia and Inner Asia.