Tanya Luhrmann is an anthropologist whose teaching and research also includes psychology. She is the Albert Ray Lang Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University. A former graduate student and Research Fellow at Christ’s, she has been an Honorary Fellow of the College since 2019.
Tanya graduated with a degree in Folklore and Mythology from Harvard in 1981 and came to Cambridge where she did an MPhil in Social Anthropology at Emmanuel College, where she commenced her doctoral studies on ‘Scions of Prospero: Ritual magic and witchcraft in present day England’. She was elected to a Research Fellowship at Christ’s in 1985 and graduated with her PhD in 1986.
At the end of her four-year tenure at Christ’s Tanya returned to the United States to take up a position at the University of California, San Diego, moving to the University of Chicago in 2000 and becoming Max Palevsky Professor in the Department of Comparative Human Development in 2004 and Co-director of the Clinical Ethnography program.
Tanya became Professor of Anthropology at Stanford in 2007, was named the Howard and Jessie Watkins University Professor in 2010, and has been the Albert Ray Lang Professor of Anthropology since 2021, also holding a courtesy appointment in Psychology.
She has served on the editorial boards of a number of journals, and held a number of positions on advisory committees and with professional organizations. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003 and the American Philosophical Society in 2022, and received a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2023 from the Society for Psychological Anthropology, of which she is a former President. For How God Becomes Real Tanya won the prestigious J I Staley Prize in 2024, offered by the School for Advanced Research for innovative works that go beyond traditional frontiers and dominant schools of thought, exemplifying outstanding scholarship and writing in anthropology.
Tanya is an anthropologist studying the mind. She has researched magic, other esoteric techniques, and spiritual experiences across cultures; conducted ethnographic studies, including fieldwork with the Parsis community in India; and explored psychiatry, religion and behaviour.
Photo credit: Nikki Ross