Profile
Hugh Raffles is Professor and Chair of Anthropology at The New School for Social Research and Director of the Graduate Institute for Design, Ethnography and Social Thought (GIDEST).
Hugh’s essays have appeared in a wide variety of venues, including Granta, Public Culture, Cultural Anthropology, the New York Review of Books, the New York Times, Cabinet, and Orion. His most recent book, The Book of Unconformities: Speculations on Lost Time (Pantheon, 2020), won the 2023 J.I. Staley Prize from the School for Advanced Research. Hugh is a recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award for non-fiction and a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
www.hughraffles.com
Ethnography; nature; writing and other forms of representation and expression.
Degrees Held
DFES 1999, Yale University
Recent Publications
Books
The Book of Unconformities: Speculations on Lost Time (2020)
Winner of the 2023 J.I. Staley Prize from The School for Advanced Research.
Insectopedia (2010)
A New York Times Notable Book; winner of the 2012 Ludwik Fleck Prize from the Society for the Social Studies of Science and the 2011 Orion Book Prize.
In Amazonia, A Natural History (2002)
A Choice/American Library Association Outstanding Academic Title; co-winner of the Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Whiting from the Society for Humanistic Anthropology.
Articles and Book Chapters
“On Stones, Large and Small,” Orion, Winter 2022.
“Jewel Identity,” Apollo: The International Art Magazine, October 2021.
“The Stones of Lewis, Portals in Time,” New York Review of Books, October 9, 2020,
“Beyond the Boundary Layer,” in Tomás Saraceno, Aria. Florence: Marsilio/Palacio Strozzi, 2020, 71.
“Muscovite,” Public Seminar, October 2, 2020.
“Removing the Teddy Roosevelt statue is just the beginning,” CNN.com, June 25, 2020.
“Field Notes on Pandemic Teaching: 5,” with Orla Murphy, Emmett Scanlon, Liska Chan, Derek Hoeferlin, Peggy Deamer, Yuko Uchikawa, Manuel Shvartzberg Carrió, Sarah Rottenberg, Germane Barnes, Jesse LeCavalier, Susannah Drake, Annmarie Adams, and Carolina Dayer, Places Journal, April 2020
“Solve et Coagula,” in Frances Richard, ed., I Stand in My Place With My Own Day Here: Site-Specific Art at The New School (New York, 2019)
“Living Through the End Times,” (co-authored with The GIDEST Collective) New Geographies vol. 9 (Fall 2017): 48-52.
“Against Purity,” Social Research: An International Quarterly vol. 84, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 171-182.
“London Stone Redux,” in John Law and Evelyn Ruppert, eds., Modes of Knowing: Resources from the Baroque. London: Mattering Press, 2016, 224-241.
“Suspended,” Orion vol. 34, no. 2 (March/April 2015): 12.
“Beetle Wrestler (Natalie Jeremijenko and Chris Woebken),” Design and Violence, Museum of Modern Art, September 2014. Reprinted in Paola Antonelli and Jamer Hunt, eds., Design and Violence. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2015, 198-201.
"Foundations,” Cabinet (2014)
"Twenty-five Years is a Long Time," Cultural Anthropology (2012)
"A Conjoined Fate," Orion (2010)
"Jews, Lice, and History," Public Culture (2007)
"Cricket Fighting," Granta (2007)
"The Language of the Bees: An Interview with Hugh Raffles by Sina Najafi," Cabinet (2007)
Research Interests
Human/non-human/non-animal relations
Awards And Honors
2023 Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
2023 J.I. Staley Prize from the School for Advanced Research
2018 Openbook Award (Taiwan)
2012 Ludwik Fleck Prize of the Society for Social Studies of Science
2012 Shortlist, de Groene Waterman Prize (Belgium)
2011 Orion Book Award
2010 Special Prize for Extending Ethnographic Understanding from the Society for Humanistic Anthropology
2009 Whiting Writers' Award
2004 Honorable Mention, Sharon Stephens First Book Prize of the American Ethnological Society
2003 Co-Winner, Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing of the Society for Humanistic Anthropology