James Laidlaw is a British anthropologist. Laidlaw was born on 12 September 1963. He attended the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

as an undergraduate, and remained there for his graduate study, culminating in a Ph.D. in 1990. While pursuing a doctoral degree, Laidlaw was appointed a junior research fellow at Cambridge in 1989. He was promoted to senior research fellow in 1993, eventually advancing to fellow of King's College. In 2016, he became

William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology The William Wyse Professorship of Social Anthropology is a professorship in social anthropology at the University of Cambridge. It was founded on 18 June 1932 and endowed partly with the support of Trinity College from money bequeathed to them b ...

and until October 2021, he was the head of the Cambridge Department of Social Anthropolog

His areas of ethnographic research include Asian religions, especially

Jainism in India Jainism is India's sixth-largest religion and is practiced throughout India. Per the 2011 census, there are 4,451,753 Jains in the 1.35 billion population of India, the majority living in Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, Ka ...

, about which he published a monograph in 1995, and

Buddhism in Taiwan Buddhism is one of the major religions of Taiwan. Taiwanese people predominantly practice Mahayana Buddhism, Confucian principles, local practices and Taoist tradition. Roles for religious specialists from both Buddhist and Taoist traditions exi ...

. He has also been among the early proponents of the influential turn to studying ethics in sociocultural anthropology, through his 2001 Malinowski Memorial Lecutre, and his 2013 "path-breaking book-length construction of the field", which Webb Keane has described as "a major work that I expect will be a cornerstone of our teaching for a generation." Finally, together with Caroline Humphrey, Laidlaw has developed an influential theory of ritual.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Laidlaw, James 1963 births Living people Academics of the University of Cambridge Alumni of the University of Cambridge British anthropologists Fellows of King's College, Cambridge 20th-century anthropologists 21st-century anthropologists William Wyse Professors of Social Anthropology