Lecturer in Social Anthropology, University College London
Director of Cultures of Sustainability, UCL Environment Institute
Co-director of the Extreme Citizen Science Research Group, UCL
See Jerome’s webpages:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/anthropology/people/academic_staff/j_lewis
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/environment-institute
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/anthropology/research/herg.htm
My research background includes (1) hunter-gatherer and former hunter-gatherer societies, (2) egalitarian politics, (3) play, ritual, and religion, (4) language and communication, (5) indigenous rights, mapping, and representation, and (6) extreme citizen science and new participatory research methodologies.
I began working with Pygmy hunter-gatherers and former hunter-gatherers in Rwanda in 1993, leading to investigation of the impacts of the genocide for Rwanda’s Twa Pygmies. Since 1994 my work has focused on the culture and society of Central African hunter-gatherers, particularly environmental relations, cultural transmission, inter-ethnic relations, and the impact of global forces (such as conservation, logging, mining, and national or international policy changes) on many hunter-gatherer and former hunter-gatherer groups across the Congo Basin. This has led to research into human rights abuses, discrimination, and economic and legal marginalisation, as well as applied studies reinforcing conservation efforts by forest people, investigating how to apply the principle of free, prior, and informed consent in Central Africa, and supporting forest people to better represent themselves to outsiders. This work has included adapting new technologies for use by non-literate hunter-gatherers, evolving into a major project developing methods to support any community to explore issues of concern through scientifically valid research. Project themes to date have focused on environmental justice issues but will expand to health issues and climate monitoring.