IVAN TACEY

 Anthropologist and Multispecies Ethnographer

​My research focuses on Indigenous lifeways, environmental change, and animism and crosscuts socio-cultural and biological anthropology, environmental science, health, and creative media. At the University of Plymouth, I lecture in Anthropology, Sociology and Criminology. I have previously lectured in Anthropology and Anthrozoology at the University of Exeter and in Anthropology, Sociology and Cultural Studies at the University of Lyon, France.

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For the last 20 years, I have conducted ethnographic research with Batek hunter-gatherers who live in the some of the last remaining tropical forests of Malaysia. I am particularly interested in how the Batek have maintained culturally distinct lifeways despite being in close contact with other groups for thousands of years. 

My research is committed to decolonizing knowledge production through embedding Indigenous methodologies, participatory research in creative co-production. My work challenges disciplinary boundaries, demonstrating how anthropology, art, science, and storytelling can intersect to create engaged, interdisciplinary scholarship that amplifies Indigenous agency, environmental justice, and the enduring power of myth and ritual in shaping human societies.