Cathryn Townsend
Role:
Anthropologist, Ik field site supervisor
Institution:
Rutgers University
Cathryn Townsend is a post-doctoral researcher on the Human Generosity Project at Rutgers University. Her broad interest is the coevolution of egalitarian social organization, symbolic culture premised on trusting relationships and extended kinship networks. Cathryn also researches the evolutionary role of mythology and ritual in creating co-operative coalitions, and she is an avid collector of folklore. Her Ph.D. research at University College London focused on the emergence of inequality among Congo Basin hunter-gatherers, and in particular the relationship between risk and social change. Before her fieldwork with the Ik of Uganda, she worked with the Baka in Cameroon and the Mbuti in the Democratic Republic of Congo.