Raymond Corbey

Biography

Born 1954. Dutch nationality. Holds degrees in Anthropology (BA), Psychology (BA) and Philosophy (BA, MA and PhD) - all from Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Attached to the School of Humanities of Tilburg University from 1990-2016 and, next to that, to Leiden University since 1995. Visiting scholar for periods up to one year at the Husserl Institute of Leuven University (Belgium), the Smithsonian Institution (African Art/Natural History; Washington DC), the AHRC Centre for the Evolution of Cultural Diversity of University College London, and the Department of Anthropology of the University of British Columbia (Vancouver).

Research Interest

Most of his research deals with human cognition, sociality, and cultural behaviour in an evolutionary perspective. A major focus here is the analysis of "domain assumptions" (implicit ontologies) guiding research in various anthropological disciplines, in particular cultural anthropology and evolutionary anthropology. Corbey departs from the idea of "history and philosophy of science" and that of anthropology as an integrated, holistic, interdisciplinary discipline, emerging out of its four fields, engaging with both evolutionary and interpretative approaches, and - its major challenge presently - struggling to work out how these two relate. One of his research lines focuses on the reception and rebuttal of evolutionary analysis in 20th-century and present-day continental-European philosophy and in the humanities, for example in research on reciprocal exchange and on narrative meaning (in myth, ritual, art). One angle of approach here is ethnozoology, specifically the relations between folk taxonomies and scientific taxonomy (e.g., of primates and humans). There is intensive cooperation with several anthropological/archaeological research programs at Leiden University, where Corbey is an associate member of the Human Origins Group directed by Wil Roebroeks.