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Michael Jackson is a graduate of the Universities of Auckland and Cambridge (UK), and has carried out ethnographic fieldwork in Sierra Leone (1969–70, 1972, 1979, 1983, 2002, 2003) and Aboriginal Australia (1990, 1991, 1994, 1997).
The author of numerous books of anthropology, including the prize-winning Paths Toward a Clearing and At Home in the World, he has also published three novels and six books of poetry (Latitudes of Exile was awarded the Commonwealth Poetry Prize in 1976, and Wall won the New Zealand Book Award for Poetry in 1981). His most recent anthropological books (In Sierra Leone and Existential Anthropology) are based on ongoing fieldwork in postwar Sierra Leone.
Michael Jackson’s work has been strongly influenced by critical theory, American pragmatism, and existential-phenomenological thought. His ethnographies have consistently sought to make thought answerable to the world – to show how reflection and research can engage with the everyday issues, exigencies and struggles that characterise human life in every society, irrespective of their historical and cultural differences. His innovations in writing ethnography reflect his determination to make anthropology speak directly to contemporary concerns and to reach an audience beyond the academy.
Michael Jackson has taught in his native New Zealand, Australia, the United States (where he was College Professor at Indiana University, Bloomington, 1988– 1996), Denmark (as a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen), and at Harvard Divinity School (where he has recently been appointed Distinguished Visiting Professor in World Religions).
Living as ever in the dual worlds of anthropology and creative writing, 2006 saw Michael Jackson awarded an honorary doctorate by Victoria University of Wellington, publish a new collection of poems (AUP), and his memoir The Accidental Anthropologist, published by Longacre Press.