David Zeitlyn

I have been working with Mambila in Cameroon since 1985, research various topics including traditional religion, sociolinguistics, kinship and history. In recent years I have started to work with Cameroonian photographers. In 2003/4 I was the Evans-Prichard lecturer at All Souls College, Oxford presenting a series of lectures on the life-history of Diko Madeleine, the first wife of Chief Konaka of Somié (see https://www.mambila.info/Diko_Web/). In 2005, as part of Africa'05, an exhibition of two Cameroonian studio photographers was held at the National Portrait Gallery, London in a display called 'Cameroon-London'. Some images from an earlier showing in Cameroon are online at https://www.mambila.info/Photography/Photo_Show/.

This led to a major show at the Fowler Museum UCLA in 2021. See https://www.fowler.ucla.edu/exhibitions/photo-cameroon/.

My work on divination has led to an exhibition at the Weston library Oxford ‘Oracles Omens and Answers’ https://visit.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/event/oracles-omens-and-answers and a related book both with Michelle Pfeffer: 2024 Divination Oracles Omens. Bodleian Library Press https://bodleianshop.co.uk/products/divination-oracles-omens

In Sept 2022 a short theory book has been published: An Anthropological Toolkit: Sixty useful concepts

The publisher’s website is: https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/ZeitlynAnthropological

A tiny video intro is on youtube: https://youtu.be/Gs3LLudEFT4

Other Interests: I have long standing interests in multimedia and how internet technologies can be used to illuminate and access museum collections and archives. My work on Mambila spider divination as a 'technology of choice making' led to some pioneering observational work on how library users choose which books to read. From this I became involved in how academic research infrastructure is managed.