The Global Goals
In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. Ivan's work contributes towards the following SDG(s):
About Ivan
Dr Ivan Tacey is an anthropologist whose research explores diverse ways of being human and the relationships through which people create worlds, places and futures. For 20 years, he has worked with Orang Asli communities in Peninsular Malaysia, undertaking long-term ethnographic research with Batek and Jahai communities on animism, shamanism, myth and ritual, egalitarianism, play, Indigenous environmental knowledge and changing relationships with the rainforest.
Ivan is particularly interested in how people make and inhabit landscapes, and how forms of personhood and sociality emerge through relationships with other people, other species and other-than-human beings. Bringing anthropology into conversation with hunter-gatherer studies, multispecies ethnography and cosmopolitical approaches, his research examines how different ways of living challenge established assumptions about society, nature and what it means to be human.
These concerns increasingly extend into questions about possible futures. Ivan's research explores how different ways of knowing and inhabiting the world might contribute to imagining social and ecological possibilities otherwise. His current project, Post-Plastic Ecologies: Indigenous Knowledge, Biomimetics and Material Futures in Practice, brings anthropology into conversation with biomimetics, environmental research, art and design to explore how Indigenous knowledge and close attention to living systems might contribute to thinking differently about materials, waste and possible post-plastic futures.
Ivan has published widely on Indigenous religion, shamanism, landscape, cosmopolitics, hunter-gatherer sociality and environmental relations, including a monograph and numerous articles and book chapters. His work also extends beyond conventional academic forms. He is currently completing an ethnographic graphic novel with artist John Hurford, using visual storytelling to explore Batek relationships with landscape, history, mythology and environmental change. He is regularly invited to present his research and contribute to lectures, conferences and workshops at universities and academic institutions in the UK and internationally.
Teaching
At the University of Plymouth, Ivan teaches across anthropology, sociology and criminology. His teaching spans questions of culture and society, environment and economy, technology and digital life, museums and material culture, embodiment, identity and inequality. It is research-led, interdisciplinary and practice-based, connecting perspectives from across the social sciences and humanities with wider questions of environment, technology, justice and social change.
In 2026–27, Ivan leads the following modules:
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ANT4007 — Becoming Human
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ANT4008 — Monsters, Mods and Magic: An Anthropology of the Body
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SOC4002 — Social Identities and Inequalities
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ANT5011 — Fieldwork Reimagined: Advanced Methods in Anthropology
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ANT5002 / ANT6003 — Gifts, Commodities and Crises: A Contemporary Guide to Economic Anthropology
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ANT5012MX — Worlds Otherwise: Science Fiction, Digital Realms and the Anthropology of the Future
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ANT5010 / ANT6010 — Comparing Cultures, Curating Worlds: Museums, Myths, and Meaning
A major emphasis of Ivan's teaching is learning through practice, combining critical knowledge with creative, digital and professional skills. Students undertake collaborative and applied projects using methods ranging from ethnographic fieldwork and visual storytelling to digital mapping and creative research, often working with museums, archives and other external organisations.
Before joining Plymouth, Ivan taught across a broad range of subjects in the social sciences and humanities, including anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, anthrozoology, language, translation and journalism, at universities in the UK and France, including the University of Exeter, Université Lumière Lyon 2, Université Jean Monnet Saint-Étienne and Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3.
Would you like to do postgraduate research with Ivan?
Ivan welcomes enquiries from prospective PhD students working across his areas of expertise, including Indigenous knowledge; environment, landscape and multispecies relations; religion, myth and ritual; hunter-gatherer societies; digital cultures, technology and imagined futures; and creative and experimental approaches to social research. He particularly welcomes interdisciplinary projects and research using ethnographic, visual, digital or collaborative methods.
