Professor Lambros Malafouris
Tutorial Fellow in Archaeology and Anthropology
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 was 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. He had the title of Professor of Cognitive & Anthropological Archaeology conferred in the Vice Chancellor’s annual Recognition of Distinction awards at the University of Oxford.
Undergraduate teaching
Lambros teaches undergraduate tutorials in Archaeology and Anthropology (both at prelims and finals) and supervises undergraduate theses.
Graduate teaching
Lambros’ approach to research and teaching has been strictly cross-disciplinary, combining perspectives from anthropology, archaeology, philosophy and embodied cognitive sciences. He teaches the modules on Archaeological Method and Theory and 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 is a cognitive archaeologist renowned for his cross-disciplinary work in understanding the role of material culture in shaping human thought processes. He has been a key contributor to the cutting-edge debates in this field and has pioneered a new approach to investigate the dynamic interplay between mind, body and material environment. His most influential contribution is the development of Material Engagement Theory (MET), which posits that cognition is not confined to the head but extends into the body and the material world. Lambros’ book How Things Shape the Mind (MIT Press, 2013) has laid out this theoretical framework. One of his principal areas of research involves exploring the concept of ‘metaplasticity’, which refers to the plasticity of both the human brain and material forms, and how these evolve together in a continuous feedback loop. A parallel key concern of his research has been the development of Process Archaeology. Lambros published a second monograph with Bloomsbury in 2020: An Anthropological Guide to the Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing (co-authored with Maria Danae Koukouti). The book is a cross-disciplinary examination of mirror gazing as a technology of self-identification that weaves together anthropological and philosophical perspectives with clinical and experimental case studies.
In recent years Lambros has been very interested in the relationship between material culture and mental health, applying MET to psychiatry and exploring how interactions with objects can affect emotional and cognitive processes. His new book People are STRANGE: Material engagement and the creation of self-consciousness (MIT Press, 2026) is using MET to investigate what is distinctive about human self-consciousness. It asks how self-consciousness – awareness of experiencing and of being the experiencer – comes into being. It argues that the self is not an inner thing in the brain but a situated, transactional, materially enacted process of self-bounding (STRANGE: Situated TRANsactional GEnesis). Lambros has another monograph Understanding Creative Gesture in Pottery Making (co-authored with Maria Danae Koukouti) in press with Bloomsbury which constitutes the principal deliverable of the HANDMADE project funded through a European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant awarded to him in 2008 (No. 771997). This project investigates the cognitive ecology and poetics of clay through an ethnographic study of traditional pottery-making practices in Greece, focusing on the relationship between hands and clay during craft production.
Lambros was Visiting Research Professor at the Department of Architecture and Design, University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’ (2022), and Visiting Professor at the Department of Culture and Society, University of the Studi di Palermo in Palermo (2022). In 2024 he was Senior Visiting Fellow at the ‘Umberto Eco’ International Centre for Humanistic Studies & the Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Bologna.
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Publications
Books (authored)
- Malafouris, L. (2026). People Are STRANGE: Material engagement and the creation of self-consciousness. Cambridge MA: 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: 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
- Malafouris, L., Gosden, C., & Bogaard, A. (2021). Process archaeology. World Archaeology, 53(1), 1-14.
- Wynn, T., Overmann, K. A., & Malafouris, L. (2021). 4E cognition in the Lower Palaeolithic. Adaptive Behavior, 29(2), 99-106.
- 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. (2025). People are STRANGE: Towards a philosophical archaeology of self. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 24(3), 685-711. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-024-10002-1.
- Malafouris, L., Fuchs, T., Gallese, V., & Röhricht, F. (2025). Steps to an EnvironMental health. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 1-26.
- Malafouris, L., Aston, A., & Alessandroni, N. (2025). Rethinking the “we” in “we” intentionality: intention-sharing with—and not simply about—things. Philosophical Psychology, 38(8), 3630-3660.
- O’Brien, C., Gallagher, S., & Malafouris, L. (2025). Handmade therapy: the hedonic impacts of engaging in pottery making. Topoi, 44(4), 1131-1144.
- Alessandroni, N., Malafouris, L., & Gallagher, S. (2024). An ecological approach to conceptual thinking in material engagement. Europe’s Journal of Psychology, 20(2), 84–103.
- Malafouris, L. & , Röhricht (2024). Re‑thinging Embodied and Enactive Psychiatry: A Material Engagement Approach. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-024-09872-6.
- Malafouris, L., Carnegie, R., Creswell, M., Iliopoulos, A., Koukouti, M. D., & Ross, W. (2023). Perspectival kinaesthetic imaging. Multimodality & Society, 3(4), 366-398.
- Malafouris, L. (2023). Enactychism: Enacting chance in creative material engagement. Possibility Studies & Society, 1(3), 300-310.
- Malafouris, L. (2023). La pensée et les choses: pour une psychologie matérielle. Appareil, (26).
- Alessandroni, N., & Malafouris, L. (2023). Blurring ontological boundaries: The transactional nature of material engagement. Adaptive Behavior, 31(2), 127-131.
- Poulsgaard, K. S., & Malafouris, L. (2023). Understanding the hermeneutics of digital materiality in contemporary architectural modelling: a material engagement perspective. AI & SOCIETY, 38(6), 2217-2227.
- Malafouris, L., & Koukouti, M. D. (2022). Where the touching is touched: The role of haptic attentive unity in the dialogue between maker and material. Multimodality & Society, 2(3), 265-287.
- Barona, A. M., & Malafouris, L. (2022). On making futures with human touch. Adaptive Behavior, 30(6), 551-553.
- Malafouris, L. (2021). Mark making and human becoming. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 28(1), 95-119.
- Malafouris, L. (2021). How does thinking relate to tool making?. Adaptive Behavior, 29(2), 107-121.
- Malafouris, L. (2021). Making hands and tools: Steps to a process archaeology of mind. World Archaeology, 53(1), 38-55.
- Koukouti, M. D., Malafouris, L., Gallagher, S., Jewitt, C., Paolucci, C., Lobaccaro, L., & Bacaro, M. (2021). On Maria Danae Koukouti, Lambros Malafouris,“An Anthropological Guide to the Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing”, London, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020, pp. 200. Studi di estetica, (21).
- Malafouris, L. (2020). Thinking as “thinging”: Psychology with things. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 29(1), 3-8.
- Malafouris, L., & Koukouti, M. D. (2020). Thinging beauty. Anthropological reflections on the making of Beauty and the beauty of making. Reti, saperi, linguaggi, 7(2), 211-238.
- 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 faberrevisited: 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 ofand for 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. Brain135: 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
- Iliopoulos, A., Malafouris, L. (2024). Towards an Ecology of Gesture: A Review (And Some Promising Paths). In: Breyer, T., Gerner, A.M., Grouls, N., Schick, J.F. (eds) Diachronic Perspectives on Embodiment and Technology. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 46, (pp. 131-144). Springer, Cham.
- Malafouris, L. (2024). What Is Cognitive Archaeology?. In Wynn, T., Overmann, K., & Coolidge, F. (Eds). Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Archaeology. Oxford University Press, 153.
- O’Brien, C., & L., Malafouris (2024). Feeling how: MET and embodied cognition in the learning of pottery skills. In Craft and Design Practice from an Embodied Perspective, (Eds) Nithikul Nimkulrat and Camilla Groth. (pp. 52-65). Routledge.
- March, P. L., & Malafouris, L. (2023). Art through material engagement… and vice versa. In The Routledge International Handbook of Creative Cognition(pp. 585-604). Routledge.
- Malafouris, L., (2023). Anthropology and Archaeology: A Necessary Unity. In Nimura, C., O’Sullivan, R., & Bradley, R. (Eds.) Sentient Archaeologies: Global Perspectives on Places, Objects and Practice. Oxbow Books (pp. 173-183).
- 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.