Donald Tuzin

Who was Donald Tuzin?

Donald F. Tuzin was a social anthropologist best known for his ethnographic work on the Ilahita Arapesh, a horticultural people living in northeast lowland New Guinea, and for comparative studies of gender and sexuality within Melanesia. Tuzin was born in Chicago, Illinois, grew up in Winona, Minnesota, and spent his teen years again in Chicago. He received his B.A. from Western Reserve University in Ohio, where he became interested in anthropology and participated in the excavation of Native American archaeological sites left by the Mound Builders. He also received his master’s degree from Case Western Reserve.

While studying at the University of London, Tuzin became interested in Sepik cultures and decided to go to the Australian National University's Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, where he worked with the famous and controversial social anthropologist Derek Freeman. Tuzin conducted fieldwork among the Ilahita Arapesh in New Guinea's East Sepik Province. He completed his Ph.D. in anthropology at ANU in 1973 and joined the anthropology department at University of California, San Diego that same year.