Professor Lambros Malafouris
Tutorial Fellow in Archaeology
Professor of Cognitive & Anthropological Archaeology
Lambros Malafouris completed his doctorate in Archaeology at the University of Cambridge (Darwin College) in 2005 under the supervision of Colin Renfrew. After his PhD, Lambros continued his research at Cambridge as a Balzan Research Fellow in Cognitive Archaeology at The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. Lambros joined Oxford University in 2010 as a Fellow in Creativity, Cognition and Material Culture at Keble College. He has also been a tutor in archaeology, anthropology, and human evolution at Keble as well as Research Fellow at the Institute of Archaeology. In 2018 Lambros has been awarded a European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant, HANDMADE: Understanding Creative Gesture in Pottery Making. He was appointed to his present position at the Institute of Archaeology and as a Fellow of Hertford College in 2020.
Undergraduate teaching
Lambros teaches undergraduate tutorials in Archaeology and Anthropology (both at prelims and finals) and supervises undergraduate theses.
Graduate teaching
Lambros teaches the module on cognitive archaeology on the MSc Archaeology course. He also supervises research students in the general areas of Cognitive, Anthropological and Theoretical archaeology. He welcomes enquiries from individuals wishing to undertake doctoral or post-doctoral research in those fields, especially from students with an interest in material engagement theory.
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Research interests
Lambros’ primary research interests lie in the archaeology of mind, the anthropology of creative material engagement, as well as the philosophy and semiotics of materiality. Specifically, he is interested in the study of the interaction between cognition and material culture. His major research achievement and contribution to this debate has been through Material Engagement Theory (MET) linking brain, body and world. Taking a comparative, process-centred approach and focusing on the intersection between neural and cultural plasticity his work critically examines many deeply entrenched assumptions about the boundaries, ontology, evolution and uniqueness of the human mind. His book How Things Shape the Mind (MIT Press 2013) has laid out these and other ideas. He has just published (with Maria Danae Koukouti) a second monograph, An Anthropological Guide to the Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing (Bloomsbury 2020). He is also currently finalising the manuscript for another book, SelfBound: Cognitive Archaeology and The Making of Human Consciousness, which was produced in part through a writing grant from the John Templeton Foundation and is under contract for publication with MIT Press. For a short piece on this project see: https://www.templeton.org/grant/selfbound-the-making-of-human-consciousness.
Lambros’ approach to research and teaching has been strictly cross-disciplinary combining perspectives from anthropology, archaeology, philosophy and embodied cognitive sciences. He is currently Principal Investigator of HANDMADE: Understanding Creative Gesture in Pottery Making funded through a European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant awarded to him in 2008. HANDMADE is an anthropological study of the process of making by hand, focusing on clay and the craft of ceramics and exploring questions about skill, memory, agency, creativity, enactive and distributed intelligence. HANDMADE examines the creative ecology of pottery-making through multi-sited participant observation in several traditional ceramic workshops spread around mainland Greece and the Islands.
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Publications
Books (authored)
- Malafouris, L. (forthcoming) Selfbound: Cognitive Archaeology and the Making of Human Consciousness. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.
- Koukouti M.D. & Malafouris, L. (2020) An Anthropological Guide to the Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing. Bloomsbury Academic.
- Malafouris, L. (2013) How Things Shape the Mind: A Theory of Material Engagement. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.
Books (edited)
- Malafouris, L., & Renfrew, C. (Eds.), (2010). The Cognitive Life of Things: Recasting the boundaries of the mind. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.
- Renfrew, C., Frith C., & Malafouris, L. (Eds.), (2009). The Sapient Mind: Archaeology meets neuroscience. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Knappett, C., & Malafouris, L. (Eds.), (2008). Material Agency: Towards a non- anthropocentric approach. New York: Springer.
Special journal theme issues
- Ihde, D., & Malafouris, L., (2019). Homo faber revisited: Postphenomenology and Material Engagement. Special Issue of Philosophy & Technology, 32 (2).
- Malafouris, L., (2019) Mind and Material Engagement. Special Issue of Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 18 (1).
- Malafouris, L., Gosden, C. & Karenleigh A. Overmann (2014). Creativity, Cognition & Material Culture. Special Issue of Pragmatics and Cognition 22 (1).
- Renfrew, C., Frith C., & Malafouris, L. (2008). The Sapient Mind: Archaeology meets neuroscience. 2008 The Sapient Mind: Archaeology meets neuroscience. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B 363 (Theme Issue).
- Malafouris, L. & Renfrew, C. (2008). Steps to a ‘neuroarchaeology’ of mind. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 18(3) & 19(1).
Journal articles
- Malafouris, L. (2020). How does thinking relate to tool making? Adaptive Behavior.
- Poulsgaard, K.S. & Malafouris, L. (2020).Understanding the hermeneutics of digital materiality in contemporary architectural modelling: A material engagement perspective. AI & Society.
- Malafouris, L. (2020). Thinking as “Thinging”: Psychology With Things. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 29(1): 3–8.
- Malafouris, L. (2019). Understanding the effects of materiality on mental health. BJPsych bulletin, 1-6.
- Malafouris, L. (2019). Mind and material engagement. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 18 (1): 1-17.
- Ihde, D., & Malafouris, L. (2019). Homo faber revisited: Postphenomenology and material engagement theory. Philosophy & Technology, 32 (2): 195–214.
- Malafouris, L., & Koukouti, M.D. (2018). How the Body Remembers its Skills Memory and Material Engagement. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 25 (7-8), 158-180.
- Malafouris, L. (2015). Metaplasticity and the Primacy of Material Engagement. Time and Mind. 8(4): 351-371.
- Gosden, C., & Malafouris, L. (2015). Process archaeology (P-Arch). World Archaeology, 47:5, 1-17.
- Malafouris, L. (2014). Creative thinging: The feeling of and for clay. Pragmatics and Cognition 22:1, 140–158.
- Malafouris, L. (2013). Where do you end, and the outside world begin?. New Scientist, 219(2933), 28-29.
- Malafouris, L. (2010). The brain-artefact interface (BAI): A challenge for archaeology and cultural neuroscience. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 5: 264–273.
- Malafouris, L. (2010). Metaplasticity and the human becoming: Principles of neuroarchaeology. Journal of Anthropological Sciences, 88: 49–72.
- Malafouris, L. (2009). ‘Neuroarchaeology’: Exploring the links between neural and cultural plasticity. Progress in Brain Research, 178: 251-59.
- Malafouris, L. (2008). Between brains, bodies and things: Tectonoetic awareness and the extended self. PhilosophicalTransactions of the Royal Society of London Series B, 363: 1993–2002.
- Malafouris L. (2008). Beads for a Plastic Mind: The ‘Blind Man’s Stick’ (BMS) hypothesis and the active nature of material culture. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 18 (3): 401-14.
- Renfrew, C., C., Frith & Malafouris, L. (2008). Introduction. The sapient mind. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B, 363: 1935–8.
- Malafouris, L. & Renfrew, C. (2008). Steps to a ‘neuroarchaeology’ of mind: An introduction. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 18(3): 381-5.
Comments/ invited review essays
- Malafouris, L. (2014). Third hand prosthesis. Journal of Anthropological Sciences, 92: 281-283.
- Malafouris, L. (2014). Invited review of Maurice Bloch’s ‘Anthropology and the Cognitive Challenge’. Current Anthropology, 55(2), 241-242.
- Malafouris, L. (2013). Mindful art. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 36 (2): 151-152.
- Malafouris, L. (2013). Cognitive archaeology. In B. Kaldis (Ed.), Encyclopedia of philosophy and the social sciences. (Vol. 3, pp. 92-94). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
- Iliopoulos, A. & Malafouris, L. (2013). Cognitive Archaeology. In C. Smith (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology (pp. 1522-1530). New York: Springer.
- Malafouris, L. (2012). Prosthetic gestures: How the tool shapes the mind. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 35 (4): 28-29.
- Malafouris, L. (2012). Comment on F. Coolidge and Karenleigh A. Overmann, “Numerosity, Abstraction, and the Emergence of Symbolic Thinking”, Current Anthropology, 53(2): 216-7.
- Malafouris, L. (2012). More than a brain: human mindscapes. Brain 135: 3839–3844.
- Malafouris, L. (2011). Comment on C. Henshilwood and B. Dubreuil, The Still Bay and Howiesons Poort, 77–59 ka: Symbolic Material Culture and the Evolution of the Mind during the African Middle Stone Age, Current Anthropology, 52(3): 385-6.
Book chapters
- Malafouris, L., (2020) Beyond Biology and Culture: Cross-disciplinary Reflections on the Universality and Diversity of the Human Mind. Balzan Papers, vol 3. Florence: Olschki Publications.
- Iliopoulos, A., & Malafouris, L., (2020). Symbols and material signs in the debate on human origins. In Andy Lock, Chris Sinha and Nathalie Gontier (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Koukouti, M.D. & Malafouris, L., (2020). Material imagination: an anthropological perspective. In Anna Abraham (ed.) The Cambridge Handbook of the Imagination, (pp. 30-46). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Malafouris, L., & Gosden C., (2020). Material engagement, plasticity, and the developmental challenge. In Ivan Gaskell and Sarah Anne Carter (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of History and Material Culture, (pp. 105-120). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Malafouris, L., (2019) What does the stick do for the blind? In Jill Bennett and Mary Zournazi (eds.) Thinking in the World. Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 115-128.
- Malafouris, L., (2018) Bringing things to mind: 4Es and Material Engagement. In Albert Newen, Leon de Bruin & Gallagher Shaun (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.755-71.
- Malafouris, L., (2017). Play and Ritual: Some thoughts from a material culture-perspective. In Colin Renfrew, Iain Morley & Michael Boyd (eds.) Ritual, Play, and Belief in Evolution and Early Human Societies. Cambridge: CUP (pp. 311-15).
- Malafouris, L., & Koukouti, M.D. (2017). More than a Body. In C. Meyer, J Streeck & J.S. Jordan (eds) Intercorporeality: Emerging Socialities in Interaction, (pp. 289-303). Oxford University Press.
- Poulsgaard, K.S. & Malafouris, L., (2017). Models, Mathematics and Materials in Digital Architecture. In Cognition Beyond the Brain (pp. 283-304). Springer International Publishing.
- Malafouris, L. (2016). On Human Becoming and Incompleteness: A Material Engagement Approach to the Study of Embodiment in Evolution and Culture. In G. Etzelmüller & C. Tewes (eds), Embodiment in Evolution and Culture (pp. 289-306), Mohr Siebeck.
- Malafouris, L. (2016). Material Engagement and the Embodied Mind. In Wynn, T., & Coolidge, F. L. (Eds.), Cognitive Models in Palaeolithic Archaeology (pp. 69-82). Oxford University Press.
- Malafouris, L. (2016). Hylonoetics: On the priority of material engagement. In K. Grigoriadis (Eds) Mixed Matters: A Multi-Material Design Compendium (pp. 140-146). Jovis Verlag.
- Walls M. & L. Malafouris. (2016). Creativity as a Developmental Ecology. In Vlad Petre Glaveanu (Ed) The Palgrave Handbook of Creativity and Culture Research (pp.553-566), Palgrave Macmillan.
- Malafouris, L. (2015). How did the Mycenaean Remember? In C. Renfrew, M. Boyd & I. Morley (Eds.), Death shall have no dominion (pp. 303-315). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Malafouris, L. (2014). On Thinging. In N. Jones, S. Skinner (Eds), Torque#1. Mind, Language and Technology, (pp. 9-19). Torque Editions.
- Iliopoulos, A., & Malafouris, L. (2014). Cognitive archaeology. In Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology (pp. 1522-1530). Springer New York.
- Malafouris, L. (2013). Learning to See: Enactive Discovery and the Prehistory of Pictorial Skill. In Klaus Sachs-Hombach & Jörg R. J. Schirra (Ed.) Origins of Pictures: Anthropological Discourses in Picture Science (pp. 72-88). Köln: Halem Verlag.
- Malafouris, L. (2013). On thinking and form-making’. In Brayer, M. A., & Migayrou, F. (Ed.) Naturaliser Architecture/Naturalizing Architecture, (pp. 244-253). Collection FRAC centre: Editions HYX.
- Malafouris, L. (2012). Linear B as Distributed Cognition: Excavating a Mind not Limited by the Skin. In Jensen J., Jessen M., & Johannsen N., (Eds.) Excavating the Mind: Cross-sections through culture, cognition and materiality (pp. 69-84). Denmark: University of Aarhus.
- Malafouris, L. (2011). Enactive discovery: the aesthetic of material engagement. In R., Manzotti (Ed), Situated Aesthetics: Art Beyond the Skin, (pp. 123-141). Exeter: Imprint Academic.
- Malafouris, L. & Renfrew, C. (2010). An Introduction to the Cognitive Life of Things: Archaeology, Material Engagement and the Extended Mind. In L. Malafouris & C. Renfrew (Eds.), The Cognitive Life of Things: Recasting the boundaries of the mind (pp. 1-12). Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.
- Malafouris, L. (2010). Knapping Intentions and the Marks of the Mental. In L. Malafouris & C. Renfrew (Eds.), The Cognitive Life of Things: Recasting the boundaries of the mind (pp. 13-22). Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.
- Knappett, C., Malafouris, L. & P. Tomkins (2010). Ceramics (as Containers). In D. Hicks & M. Beaudry (Eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies (pp. 588-612). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Malafouris, L. (2010). Grasping the concept of number: How did the sapient mind move beyond approximation? In C. Renfrew & I. Morley (Eds.), The Archaeology of Measurement: Comprehending Heaven, Earth and Time in Ancient Societies (pp. 35-43). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Malafouris, L. (2009). Vital Materiality/Biothing. In Andrasek A. (Ed.) Biothing, (pp. 32- 47). Collection FRAC centre: Editions HYX.
- Malafouris, L. (2008). Is it ‘me’ or is it ‘mine’? The Mycenaean sword as a body-part. In D. Boric & J. Robb (Eds.) Past Bodies (pp. 115-23). Oxford: Oxbow Books.
- Knappett, C. & Malafouris, L. (2008). Material and Non-Human Agency: An Introduction. In Knappett C. & L. Malafouris (Eds.) Material Agency: Towards a non-anthropocentric perspective (pp. ix-xix). New York: Springer.
- Malafouris, L. (2008). At the Potter’s Wheel: An argument for Material Agency. In C. Knappett & L. Malafouris (Eds.), Material Agency: Towards a non-anthropocentric perspective (pp. 19- 36). New York: Springer.
- Malafouris, L. (2007). The sacred engagement: Outline of a hypothesis about the origin of human ‘religious intelligence’. In D.A. Barrowclough & C. Malone (Eds.) Cult in Context, Reconsidering Ritual in Archaeology (pp. 198–205). Oxford: Oxbow Books.
- Malafouris, L. (2007). Before and beyond representation: Towards an enactive conception of the Palaeolithic image. In C. Renfrew & I. Morley (Eds.) Image and Imagination: A Global History of Figurative Representation (pp. 289-302). Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.
- Malafouris, L. (2004). The Cognitive Basis of Material Engagement: Where Brain, Body and Culture Conflate. In E. DeMarrais, C. Gosden & C. Renfrew (Eds.), Rethinking Materiality: The Engagement of Mind with the Material World (pp. 53-62). Cambridge: The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.