Anthony Cohen

Who is Anthony Cohen?

Anthony Cohen, CBE, FRSE is a British social anthropologist.

Cohen was born in London in 1946. Educated at Whittingehame College, Brighton, the University of Geneva and the University of Southampton, he is a social anthropologist with specialist interests in personal, social and national identity. He conducted fieldwork in Springdale, Newfoundland on local-level politics; and in Whalsay, the longest sustained study of a rural British community ever undertaken. He then did research on personal and national identity in Scotland, and on the literary influences on Scottishness.

Anthony Cohen was a research fellow at the Memorial University of Newfoundland; assistant professor at Queen's University and lecturer and senior lecturer in social anthropology at the University of Manchester. In 1988 he was appointed Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, a post he held until 2003. He was Provost of Law and Social Sciences, and Dean of Social Sciences at Edinburgh for five years. In 2003, he was appointed Honorary Professor of Social Anthropology.