Brian Boyd

Director of Museum Anthropology: Lecturer in Discipline

Email: bb2305@columbia.edu

Settler Colonialism, Museums, Nationalism, Sound Studies, The Sonic Past, Archives, Gender, Queer Theory, Materiality, Anthropology of Science, Built Environment, Pre-urban Spaces, Human-Animal Relations, Multispecies Approaches, Landscape History, Political Ecology, Mortuary Practices, Ritual

Brian Boyd is Director of Museum Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology. He works on the prehistory and politics of archaeology in southwest Asia, with a focus on Palestine. He is particularly interested in the writing of microhistories as a counter to the grand narratives of social life in the deep past. His current fieldwork takes place in the Palestinian Territories, where he codirects a Columbia University/Birzeit University archaeology and museum anthropology community project, focusing in and around the village/town of Shuqba, northwest of Ramallah. This project involves collaboration with the local community to produce a deep history of their village and its landscapes, which will be represented in museum exhibits and installations in the local area and beyond. He also writes on critical human-animal studies, museum anthropology, gender/queer theory and sound studies.

Brian is currently codirector of the Center for Palestine Studies, co-chair of the University Seminar on Human-Animal Studies, and Chair Emeritus of the New York Academy of Sciences Anthropology Division. In 2018-19, his articles appeared in the journals Asian Archaeology and Current Anthropology, and in the Routledge volume Multispecies Archaeology.