Radu Umbres

Radu Umbres is an anthropologist fusing ethnographic research with cognitive approaches to morality, cooperation, and communication. He studied Sociology at the University of Bucharest and the University of Oxford, followed by a PhD in Anthropology at University College London after two years of fieldwork in a Romanian village. After postdoctoral fellowships at Institut Jean Nicod, Paris and New Europe College, he currently teaches at National School of Political and Administrative Studies...See more

Radu Umbres is an anthropologist fusing ethnographic research with cognitive approaches to morality, cooperation, and communication. He studied Sociology at the University of Bucharest and the University of Oxford, followed by a PhD in Anthropology at University College London after two years of fieldwork in a Romanian village. After postdoctoral fellowships at Institut Jean Nicod, Paris and New Europe College, he currently teaches at National School of Political and Administrative Studies Bucharest. His recent work focuses on apparently-irrational cultural imitation in cargo cults, the mechanisms of social initiation by pranking, and revisiting other classical themes in anthropology from a cognitive perspective. See less