I was born in Australia, spent two years of my childhood in the USA, and then moved to the UK, living just outside Manchester in Bowdon, Cheshire.  My primary education was at Stamford Park Primary School (Altrincham), and I then went on to secondary education at Altrincham County Grammar School for Girls, where I took “A” levels in Latin, Ancient Greek, and English, and ended up as Head Girl (in fact “Dowager” Head Girl as I stayed on into the Third Year Sixth).  My undergraduate degree was taken at University College London, and after I graduated in 1964, I went as a postgraduate student first to LSE, and then followed my supervisor, Professor Paul Stirling, in 1965 to the new University of Kent at Canterbury, where he had collected together a group of anthropologists carrying out research in the Mediterranean area and in Europe (very controversial at that time). 

My research began with my fieldwork for a doctorate in anthropology, carried out in Greece in 1966-67.  As the only two studies published in English at that time were of shepherds (John Campbell’s Honour, Family, and Patronage, 1964, about the Sarakatsani in northern Greece) and farmers (Ernestine Friedl’s Vasilika, a village in Modern Greece, 1962) I decided to carry out fieldwork on an island, and eventually ended up on Anafi, a small island in the Cyclades, just to the east of Santorini, although the topics I investigated were very different from the intial formulation of “inter-island links”.  I called the island “Nisos” in many of my early publications, but in consultation with islanders and migrants, I now use the island’s real name.  I wrote a book about this first fieldwork, Greek Island Life: Fieldwork on Anafi, which was published in 2001.

The thesis which resulted from my sixteen months on the island: Ritual and Property Relations on a Greek Island, had as its main theme the interconnections between kinship, property and ritual.  Important additional themes were migration and rural-urban links.   These findings were summarised in the article “Houses, fields and graves...” (1976) which has also been translated into French (“Des terres...” 1986).  I was appointed Assistant Lecturer in Anthropology in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Swansea University in October 1968.

During the following years I lectured to undergraduates on almost every aspect of mainstream anthropology including kinship and social organisation, economic and political anthropology, ritual and symbolic systems, as well as taking part in courses on theory and methods in anthropology and sociology, and ethnographic area courses on North America, the Mediterranean area, and Greece.  I also taught in courses on applied anthropology and social change, and on classic and current ethnographies. The teaching of the social sciences at Swansea went through a number of changes, including the transition to Joint and Single Honours, and the move to modularisation and to assessment by examination and other means at the end of each teaching block (semester) from a system of final examinations all at the end of the third year of study. All our undergraduate teaching has now ended, following disinvestment in January 2004. When the Department began teaching at Master’s level (there are two programmes: Social Research; and Cultural Awareness), I took part in both solo and team teaching in both. Teaching commitments often made it difficult to carry on with fieldwork and research without the aid of research grants and funding.

My second piece of Greek fieldwork (aided by a grant, HR2445, from what was then the SSRC, now the ESRC) was carried out in the summer of 1973 among the Anafiot migrants in Athens and investigated individual family links as well as the role of the Migrants’ Association in relation to welfare and improvement schemes on the island. It also detailed the growing factionalism between the long-established, now mostly white-collar, migrants and the more recent, mostly blue-collar, migrants. A number of publications resulted (“Greek urban migrants...”, 1977; and “Institutional and transformational migration...”, 1983).  I was declared an Honorary Member of the Anafiot Migrants’ Association after this visit.

Despite the heavy teaching load resulting from the development of Single Honours Anthropology courses from 1981 onwards, I maintained research activities by carrying out mainly library-based investigations in the UK. Following up one of the themes from my first research, ritual obligations, I began a study of Eastern Orthodoxy.  One piece of research considered the role of ikons, not as articles of faith, nor as objects of art-history appreciation, but in the theory and practice of Orthodoxy, see “Icons in theory and practice...”, 1985, and also “Whose Tradition...?”, 1995.  More recently, I have looked at the significance of incense in Greek Orthodoxy (see “The anthropology of smell….”, 2005).

In the Easter vacation of 1983 I made a return visit to the island after a ten year gap. This visit provided both the impetus and the information for a successful grant application to the ESRC (GOO-232341), carried out from August 1987 to July 1988. The themes of migration and tourism dominated the research and provided a major contribution to the literature on tourism by highlighting the role of return migrants in the tourism development of their place of origin (“Return migrants...”, 1993), but I was also able to collect material on changes in ritual practice (“Changes in the construction and care of graves...”, 1991; “Mattresses and migrants..”, 1992).   I was declared an Honorary Member of the Anafiot Migrants’ Association (for the second time) after this visit, and I continue to receive their bi-monthly newspaper.

A discovery during the final phase of the 1987-88 fieldwork took my researches in a social historical direction.  I was shown an archive of glass negatives relating to a commune set up on Anafi by people who had been deported to the island in the late 1930s as political exiles (other “public dangers” who were exiled during this period, the dictatorship of Metaxas, included animal-thieves, bandits, drug-addicts, and those who played the musical instruments, the bouzouki and baglama, associated with places frequented by hashish smokers and other “low-life” types).    Finding that very little had been published in English or in Greek about the Metaxas exile communes, I studied the archive of images, found memoirs published by former exiles, looked out contemporary newspaper reports, and traced unpublished diaries and letters, as well as using interviews with former exiles, to provide information for a series of publications, culminating in a book, The social organisation of exile: Greek political detainees in the 1930s, 2001.  This has now been translated into Greek and published by Alexandreia Press, Athens.  The full archive of photos and commentary on them can be seen here.

With a long time-span and rich and detailed materials on which to work, I was able to make systematic comparisons of the island as it had been in the 60s and 70s with the situation in the 80s (“Family, economy and community...”,1990). I also welcomed the introduction of a more reflexive approach in anthropology to reflect critically on my earlier work and develop more flexible models (see “Changing places...”, 1992). I have been encouraged to write more about the various decades of my research, as a time span such as that of my Greek fieldwork has been rarely represented in the literature.

Recently (2006) I carried out a pilot study, funded by the ESRC (RES-000-22-1641), of the effects of government policies and European funding, as well as of tourism, on Anafi and on its migrants in Athens.  The full report is published on the ESRC “Society Today” website (use the search facility and try “peripheral community”) but the main findings on the island were as follows:  the focal area of the village had changed partly as a result of improved access. In the past, the main locus for male contact was the area of the coffee houses on a narrow street in the centre of the village, now the focus of activity is at the eastern end of the village where there is a bus-stop at the point where an asphalt road comes up from the harbour, to join a circular motor-road around the village, and to connect with “agricultural” (unpaved) roads to many areas of the island, which in the past could only be reached by donkey or on foot.  Previously inaccessible building sites are now accessible and lorries are able to transport cement or groceries to warehouses.  Many restaurants, bars and coffee shops cater to tourists but now also remain open off-season for locals and for the teachers who staff the village primary and secondary schools and sixth-form college.  The schools have new facilities including computers, which are also being used in a special programme to help local people, particularly women, to qualify for the European Computer Driving License. Local administration has been modernised: the village council office routinely uses fax-machines and the internet, and the offices of KEP – the Centre for the Service of the Citizen – act as a Citizens’ Advice Bureau for anything concerning Greek bureaucracy.  While island men continued to work mainly in building and construction, there had also been a revival in agriculture, particularly for domestic consumption rather than as a commercial enterprise, as a result of easier access to fields, olive groves and garden land by agricultural roads.  In addition, immigrant workers from Albania and China were frequently seen around the village, whitewashing buildings or selling electrical and display items.

I found that islanders feel that “traditional” customs are in decline although a number of them are making great efforts to revive (or re-invent?) them, although there is some controversy surrounding a scheme to establish a museum in which to house traditional domestic and agricultural items and those which embody the island’s heritage.  Many islanders say that the solidarity and good fellowship and co-operation of the past have given way to simferon (self-interest) which they say is now more prevalent.  At the end of my visit to the island, to mark the forty years with which I had been associated with the islanders and migrants, I was honoured by the village council, which, at a special meeting, declared me an Honorary Citizen of Anafi.

In Athens, research among the migrant islanders showed that their Migrants Association still played an important role both in keeping active links with the island, and had a “Social and Cultural Centre” in an Athenian suburb where members of migrant families met for talks, events such as the cutting of the New Year cake, and to organise coach trips.  The migrants’ football team, whose matches against other amateur groups I had frequently attended during the winter of 1987-88, had now disbanded as its members grew older and no younger men came in to replace them.  However, a young persons’ dance troupe, mainly attracting girls and younger women, was very popular, and after training at the migrants’ Cultural Centre, took part in many Athens-based inter-island competitions and displays of traditional island culture.

This was a “pilot study” and I am hoping to be able to carry out the full-scale study for which this was a trial-run sometime in the next two years.

While migration has always been a major topic in my research, tourism became an important theme from the 1970s onwards, and interest in kinship and ritual continue.  Besides working on grant applications for the full-scale study of Anafi and its migrants, I am currently researching an archive of handwritten newspapers from the Anafiot exiles’ commune, and a survey article on this material has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Modern Greek Studies.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

• 1976a. ‘Houses, fields and graves: property and ritual obligations on a Greek island’, Ethnology XV,1: 21-34.
• 1976b. ‘The idiom of family’, Chapter 18, pp 347-362 in: J G  Peristiany (ed.) Mediterranean Family Structures, Cambridge University Press.
• 1977a. ‘Greek urban migrants and their rural patron saint’, Ethnic Studies 1: 14-23 (Centre for Migrant Studies, Monash University, Australia).
• 1977b. ‘Melitera: Greek island cheesecakes’, pp 34-36 in: Jessica Kuper (ed.) The Anthropologists' Cookbook, RKP.
• 1983.  ‘Institutional and transformational migration and the politics of community: Greek internal migrants and their Migrants' Association’, European Journal of Sociology 24: 263-287.
• 1985.  ‘Icons in theory and practice: an Orthodox Christian example’, History of Religions 24, 4: 345-368.
• 1986.  ‘Des terres, des prénoms et des sepultres: propriétés et devoirs rituels sur une île grecque’, Chapter 14, pp 161-171 in: B Kayser (ed.) Les Sociétés Rurales de la Méditerranée.
• 1990.  ‘Family, economy and community on a Greek island’, pp 143-163 in C C Harris (ed.) Family, Economy and Community, University of Wales Press.
• 1991a. ‘The power of the dead: changes in the care and construction of graves and family vaults on a small Greek island’, Journal of Mediterranean Studies 1, 1: 101-119.
• 1991b. ‘An ironic mirror: Michael Herzfeld on Greece, Anthropology, and the anthropology of Greece’, Journal of Mediterranean Studies, 1,1: 135-140 (review article).
• 1991c. ‘The social organization of exile: the everyday life of political exiles in the Cyclades in the 1930s’, Journal of Modern Greek Studies 9, 1: 63-81.
• 1992a. ‘Changing places and altered perspectives: research on a Greek island in the 60s and in the 80s’, Ch 9, pp147-162 in: J Okely & H Callaway (eds.) Anthropology and autobiography, Routledge (ASA Monographs 29).
• 1992b. ‘Mattresses and migrants: a patron saint's festival on a small Greek island over two decades’, Ch 8, pp155-172 in: J Boissevain (ed) Revitalizing European Rituals, Routledge.
• 1993. ‘Return migrants and tourism development: an example from the Cyclade’", Journal of Modern Greek Studies 11: 60-74.
• 1994. ‘Making a world: political exiles in 1930s Greece’, Kampos: Cambridge Papers in Modern Greek 2: 1-46.
• 1995a. ‘Saying `no' in Greece: some preliminary thoughts on hospitality, gender and the evil eye’, pp133-146 in: S Damianakos et al (eds.) Les amis et les autres: Mélanges en l'honneur de John Peristiany = Brothers and Others: essays in honour of John Peristiany, Athens: EKKE (Greek National Centre of Social Research).
• 1995b. ‘Where the streets have no name: constructing and reconstructing tradition with vaults and cubes’, in: E Pavlides and S B Sutton (eds.) “Constructed meaning: form and process in Greek architecture”, special section of Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 1994/95 vol 10/11:439-461.
• 1996a. ‘Family and economic life in a Greek island community’, pp.157-177 in: Graham Crow (ed.) The Sociology of Rural Communities vol 2, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
• 1999. Website [130 images from Anafi archive of commune of political exiles, with commentary]
• 2000. ‘A short note on the Jewish members of a political exiles’ commune’, Bulletin of Judaeo-Greek Studies 26: 26-31.
• 2001a. The Social Organisation of Exile: Greek Political Detainees in the 1930s, Harwood Academic Publishers (now Routledge).
• 2001b. Greek Island Life: fieldwork on Anafi, Harwood Academic Publishers (now Routledge). 
• 2002. “Heroines, hysterics and ordinary women: representations of Greek women political exiles”, South European Society and Politics 2001, 6 (3): 1-29.
• 2003a. ‘Recollecting difference: Archive-Marxists and Old Calendarists in an exile community’, Chapter 5, pp.105-128 in: The Usable Past: Greek Metahistories edited by Keith Brown and Yannis Hamilakis, Lexington Books.
• 2003b. ‘The role of return migrants and urban migrants’ associations in the revival and reinvention of Greek island tradition: an example from the Cyclades”, in: W.H.Waldren & J.A. Ensenyat (eds) “World Islands in Prehistory: International Insular Investigations, V Deia International Conference of Prehistory”, BAR [British Archaeology Reports], International Series 1095: 139-151.
• 2003c. ‘The piglets that fell from the sky: some cautionary tales about Greek statistics’, Journal of Mediterranean Studies 13 (1): 21-44.
• 2004. I koinoniki organosi stin eksorias: politikoi kratoumeni sto mesopolemo = The Social Organisation of Exile, Athens: Alexandreia Press.
• 2005. ‘Why does incense smell religious? The anthropology of smell meets Greek Orthodoxy’, Journal of Mediterranean Studies 15, 1: 51-70.
• 2006. ‘The transformation of a peripheral community: a pilot study’, end-of-award report for ESRC (RES-000-22-1641).
• 2008. ‘Conformity, humour and parody: handwritten newspapers from an exiles’ commune, 1938-1943’. To appear in Journal of Modern Greek Studies.