# Michael D. Jackson Senior Research Fellow in World Religions ![Michael D. Jackson](/sites/g/files/omnuum5526/files/styles/hwp_4_5__480x600/public/hds2/files/jacksonmichael-2.jpg?itok=r7NKIBJq) email ## Education - BA, Victoria University of Wellington - MA, Auckland University - PhD, Cambridge University ## Profile Michael D. Jackson is an anthropologist and author with extensive fieldwork experience in Sierra Leone and Aboriginal Australia. His academic work has been strongly influenced by critical theory, American pragmatism, and existential-phenomenological thought. Through a direct engagement with the everyday situations and struggles that characterize human life in any society, irrespective of its specific historical and cultural conditions, the ethnographic method of participant-observation promises not only an ethical and empathic understanding of ourselves in relation to others and otherness; it may provide new insights into the limits and possibilities of both comparative analysis and viable coexistence in a multiplex world. He is the author of numerous books of anthropology, including the prize-winning *Paths Toward a Clearing* and *At Home in the World*, and has also published seven works of fiction, a memoir, and nine volumes of poetry. His most recent books are *Coincidences: Synchronicity, Verisimilitude, and Storytelling* (2021), *The Genealogical Imagination: Two Studies of Life Over Time* (2021), *Critique of Identity Thinking* (2019),*The Work of Art: Rethinking the Elementary Forms of Religious Life* (2016), and *The Wherewithal of Life: Ethics, Migration and the Question of Well-Being* (2013). Professor Jackson retired from active teaching duties at HDS in 2022 and is now a senior research fellow in world religions. ## Selected publications - [*Harmattan: A Philosophical Fiction*](http://cup.columbia.edu/book/harmattan/9780231172349) (Columbia University Press, 2015) - [*Lifeworlds: Essays in Existential Anthropology*](http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/L/bo14216969.html) (University of Chicago Press, 2013) - [*Between One and One Another*](https://www.ucpress.edu/books/between-one-and-one-another/paper) (University of California Press, 2012) - [*Road Markings: An Anthropologist in the Antipodes*](http://www.rosamirabooks.com/books/road-markings/) (Rosa Mira Books, 2012) - [*Life within Limits: Wellbeing in a World of Want*](https://www.dukeupress.edu/life-within-limits) (Duke University Press, 2011) - [*The Palm at the End of the Mind: Relatedness, Religiosity, and the Real*](https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-palm-at-the-end-of-the-mind) (Duke University Press, 2010) - [*Excursions*](https://www.dukeupress.edu/excursions) (Duke University Press, 2007) - [*In Sierra Leone*](https://www.dukeupress.edu/in-sierra-leone) (Duke University Press, 2004) - [*At Home in the World*](https://www.dukeupress.edu/at-home-in-the-world) (Duke University Press, 1995) - [*Allegories of the Wilderness: Ethics and Ambiguity in Kuranko Narratives*](https://iupress.org/9780253304711/allegories-of-the-wilderness/) (Indiana University Press, 1982) ## See also - "[The Philosopher Who Would Not Be King](https://bulletin.hds.harvard.edu/the-philosopher-who-would-not-be-king/)," *Harvard Divinity Bulletin* 38, nos. 3 & 4 (Summer/Autumn 2010). - "[In the Footsteps of Walter Benjamin](https://bulletin.hds.harvard.edu/in-the-footsteps-of-walter-benjamin/)," *Harvard Divinity Bulletin* 34, no. 2 (Spring 2006). ## Support To reach Harvard Divinity School's faculty coordinators, email [div-faculty\_coordinators@calists.harvard.edu](mailto:div-faculty_coordinators@calists.harvard.edu). For media inquiries or requests, please [contact Tyler Sprouse](mailto:tsprouse@hds.harvard.edu) in the Office of Communications. - ## Affiliation [Faculty](/affiliation/faculty) - ## Alpha Grouping [F-J](/alpha-grouping/f-j) - ## Faculty Type [Research Professors and Emeriti](/faculty-type/research-professors-and-emeriti) - ## Media Expertise [Anthropology](/media-expertise/anthropology) [Human Rights](/media-expertise/human-rights) [International Affairs and Conflict](/media-expertise/international-affairs-and-conflict) [Multiculturalism](/media-expertise/multiculturalism) [Social Ethics and Social Justice](/media-expertise/social-ethics-and-social-justice) [Violence and Religion](/media-expertise/violence-and-religion)