Dr Lambros Malafouris

malafrouis
Johnson Research and Teaching Fellow in Creativity, Cognition and Material Culture
+44 (0)1865 278267
lambros.malafouris@keble.ox.ac.uk

Research Interests

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’. 

Research Profile

Current Activities

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.

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. For instance, what implications follow the seemingly unique human predisposition to reconfigure our bodies and extend our senses by using tools and material culture? What can we learn about human Cognitive and Sensory Enhancement (CSE) by looking at the origin of Homo sapiens and the emergence of ‘modern’ human intelligence?

While my work has been largely developed in relation to early human prehistory, it can also be seen as a form of philosophical anthropology trying to investigate contemporary problems in philosophy of mind and cognitive sciences in their broader antropological, historical and evolutionary foundation. For instance, much of my recent work is centered on current interdisciplinary debates on topics such as the extended mind hypothesis, enactive perception, distributed cognition, the emergence of human self, or the so-called human enhancement debate. I have been addressing empirical and theoretical topics extending from early stone tools, personal ornamentation and the ‘exographic’ symbolic technologies of more recent periods, to the latest innovations in neuro-prosthetics and cognitive enhancement. In addition, I have written a number of articles on the impact of material engagement in the emergence of human self-awareness, the development of numerical thinking, symbolism, aesthetics and human creativity.

My research approach to the above themes and questions is strictly cross-disciplinary. It bridges perspectives and methods from archaeology, philosophy, anthropology and neuroscience. Taking a long term, comparative approach and focusing on the intersection between neural and cultural plasticity I seek to re-examine a number of ‘common wisdom’ assumptions, on the one hand, about the cognitive life of things, and on the other, about the boundaries, ontology and uniqueness of the human mind.

(I welcome applications for doctoral supervision in these or related areas).

Publications

  • Thinking as "Thinging": Psychology With Things

    Malafouris, L
    2020
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    Journal article
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    CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
    material-engagement theory, cognitive archaeology, things, materiality, pottery making

  • Understanding the effects of materiality on mental health.

    Malafouris, L
    2019
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    Journal article
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    BJPsych bulletin
    SummaryConsensus is growing, in many areas of the humanities and social sciences, that aspects of the material world we live in have causal efficacy on our minds - the major dynamic being the plasticity of the brain linked to the affordances of our bodily engagements with things. The implications of that on how we approach and understand important mental health issues have not been adequately addressed. This paper proposes a material engagement approach to the study of the processes by which different forms of materiality achieve their effects. Focusing on the example of dementia, I propose that a collaboration between archaeology, anthropology, philosophy and psychiatry could help us to fill this gap in our knowledge, allowing us to understand the exact effects of everyday objects, personal possessions and forms of material engagement on people with dementia.Declaration of interestNone.

  • Homo faber Revisited: Postphenomenology and Material Engagement Theory.

    Ihde, D, Malafouris, L
    2019
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    Journal article
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    Philosophy & technology
    Humans, more than any other species, have been altering their paths of development by creating new material forms and by opening up to new possibilities of material engagement. That is, we become constituted through making and using technologies that shape our minds and extend our bodies. We make things which in turn make us. This ongoing dialectic has long been recognised from a deep-time perspective. It also seems natural in the present in view of the ways new materialities and digital ecologies increasingly envelop our everyday life and thinking. Still the basic idea that humans and things are co-constituted continues to challenge us, raising important questions about the place and meaning of materiality and technical change in human life and evolution. This paper bridging perspectives from postphenomenology and Material Engagement Theory (MET) is trying to attain better understanding about these matters. Our emphasis falls specifically on the human predisposition for technological embodiment and creativity. We re-approach the notion Homo faber in a way that, on the one hand, retains the power and value of this notion to signify the primacy of making or creative material engagement in human life and evolution and, on the other hand, reclaims the notion from any misleading connotations of human exceptionalism (other animals make and use tools). In particular, our use of the term Homo faber refers to the special place that this ability has in the evolution and development of our species. The difference that makes the difference is not just the fact that we make things. The difference that makes the difference is the recursive effect that the things that we make and our skills of making seem to have on human becoming. We argue that we are Homo faber not just because we make things but also because we are made by them.

  • Mind and material engagement

    Malafouris, L
    2019
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    Journal article
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    Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences

  • How the Body Remembers its Skills Memory and Material Engagement

    Malafouris, L, Koukouti, MD
    2018
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    Journal article
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    JOURNAL OF CONSCIOUSNESS STUDIES
    • More