Research Affiliate
Pascal Boyer studied philosophy and anthropology at University of Paris and Cambridge, where he did his graduate work with Professor Jack Goody, on memory and oral literature. He has done anthropological fieldwork in Cameroon on the transmission of the Fang oral epics and on Fang traditional religion. Since then he has worked mostly on the experimental study of cognitive capacities underling cultural transmission, particularly in the domain of religious beliefs and behaviors. Pascal Boyer is the author of Religion explained (2001) and Minds Make Societies (2018). After teaching in Cambridge, San Diego, Lyon and Santa Barbara, P Boyer moved to his present position as Henry Luce Professor of Individual and Collective Memory at Washington University, St. Louis.