Macquarie University

Department of Anthropology

Academic Staff - Greg Downey

Head of Department and Associate Professor
Office: W6A/614
Phone: (61 2) 9850 8079
E-mail: greg.downey@mq.edu.au

Academic Profile
For more than two decades I have been conducting research on the perceptual,
phenomenological, and physiological effects of long-term physical training, especially sports and
dance. I first turned to these topics to better understand the socialization of boys into men across
cultures. While doing my masters and doctorate at the University of Chicago, my research led to an
apprenticeship in the Afro-Brazilian martial art, capoeira, and several years of field research in
Brazil.
After completing my PhD in 1998, working briefly as a design consultant, and doing a postdoc at
Columbia University's Society of Fellows in the Humanities, I took a position at the University of
Notre Dame in 2000. I taught there until the end of 2005, convening courses on research methods,
anthropological theory, Latin America, applied anthropology, and music of the African Diaspora. I
developed an innovative curriculum to integrate service-learning experience into student's academic
lives that also resulted in the 'Bringing the Learning Home' curriculum for supplementing study
abroad experience (supported by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council, now the Office of
Learning and Teaching). In 2005, I decided for personal reasons to move to Australia.
Since arriving at Macquarie in 2006, I have taught on human rights and culture, ethnographic
research methods, and economic anthropology and global poverty. Currently, I teach about human
rights, but have added new courses on human evolution and diversity and psychological
anthropology. I received the Vice Chancellor's commendation for Excellence in Teaching in 2013
and also created Macquarie's first Massive Online Open Course (MOOC), 'Becoming Human:
Anthropology,' with Open Universities Australia. I am currently involved in designing a new PACE
unit for Anthropology, which we hope to offer in winter break of 2015.
In my teaching, I strive very hard to help students develop anthropological skills in research,
analysis and writing that they can apply in a range of settings and professions. I currently serve as
Head of Department in Anthropology and am available for consultation by graduate students
interested in research design and ethics compliance.
Areas of Expertise
• Neuroanthropology, psychological anthropology, and research combining cognitive science
and anthropology
• Brazil, Latin America, and the United States
• Sport, ethnomusicology, and dance
• Human rights, economic anthropology, and development studies
• Mixed methods research design, biocultural theory, evolutionary theory, and phenomenology

Research Profile
My research focuses on studying the effects of skill acquisition, especially on cognitive and sensory
learning, from a biocultural and neuroanthropological perspective. I have significant secondary
research projects in areas like service-based learning, human rights, and evolutionary theory.
My interest in the neuroanthropology of learning arose first in research on the Afro-Brazilian dance
and martial art, capoeira, a project that resulted in a number of publications including the book,
Learning Capoeira: Lessons in Cunning from an Afro-Brazilian Art ( Oxford, 2005) (see below for
other publications). Throughout this project, I grappled with practitioners' claims that the art
changed their perceptions, bodies, and dispositions toward the world. Research in the
neurosciences, the psychology of perception, and sports physiology suggested that their accounts of
training affecting perception could be explained by the pattern of enculturation of the body and
brain at a variety of levels: physiological, neurological, behavioural and interpretive. More simply,
capoeira changed practitioners, including me, so much that I began to explore the neurological
consequences of diverse training regimens; sports were a great laboratory to study
neuroanthropologically the extremes of human potential.
To understand the neurological and physiological consequences of training, and how that might
provide a model of what culture does more generally, I draw on a wide range of research, theory,
and analytical techniques, including quantitative methods. But my central technique is close
ethnography, including becoming an apprentice in many cases. I believe that it is possible to study
cultural variation in cognition, perception, and even brain development from a wide variety of
perspectives, and that anthropology is an essential partner for disciplines like cultural neuroscience
and cross-cultural psychology that are trying to understand human variation. For me, physical
disciplines across cultures provide 'natural experiments' that explore the envelope of human self-
induced change: in my case, this has led to research on capoeira and mixed martial arts,
echolocation in the blind, metabolic change in free divers, and cognitive skills in rugby and other
sports.
I've written widely about my research and other anthropological interests on the weblog, PLOS
Neuroanthropology (and its predecessor, Neuroanthropology.net). An up-to-date list of publications,
with many off-prints or pre-print drafts can be found at my Academia.edu site.

Supervision
I have supervised research projects at the Masters and Doctoral level on a range of subjects, but am
especially suited to help early-career researchers interested in neuroanthropology and cognitive and
psychological anthropology, in topics like skill acquisition, perceptual learning, training,
phenomenology, sports, performance, childhood, and dance. I have ongoing area interests in Latin
American (especially Brazil), the US, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific.
Publications

Books
• 2005. Learning Capoeira: Lessons in Cunning from an Afro-Brazilian Art. New York:
Oxford University Press.
• 2006. Co-edited with Melissa Fisher. Frontiers of Capital: Ethnographic Reflections on the
New Economy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
• 2012. Co-authored with Tonia L. Gray and Jan Gothard. Bringing the Learning Home:
Learning and Teaching Resources for Study Abroad. Department of Education, Australia.
(Teaching modules and support materials available here.)
[http://www.tlc.murdoch.edu.au/project/btlh/]
• 2013. Co-edited with Daniel H. Lende. The Encultured Brain: An Introduction to
Neuroanthropology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Selected Peer Reviewed Articles

• 2012. With Daniel Lende. "Neuroanthropology and Its Applications." Annals of
Anthropological Practice 36(1): 1-25.
• 2012. "Culture variation in rugby skills: A preliminary neuroanthropological report." Annals
of Anthropological Practice 36(1): 26-44.
• 2010. "'Practice without Theory': A neuroanthropological perspective on embodied
learning." For a special issue "Making Knowledge", Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute 16(s1): S22-S40.
• 2009. With Eric Brymer and Tonia Gray. "Extreme sports as a precursor to environmental
sustainability.' Journal of Sport & Tourism 14(2): 193-204.
• 2008. "Scaffolding Imitation in Capoeira: Physical Education and Enculturation in an Afro-
Brazilian Art." American Anthropologist 110(2): 204-213.
• 2007. "Producing Pain: Techniques and Technologies in No-Holds-Barred Fighting." Social
Studies of Science 37(2): 201-226.
• 2005. "Educating the Eyes: Biocultural Anthropology and Physical Education."
Anthropology in Action: Journal for Applied Anthropology in Policy and Practice 12 (2):
56-71.
• 2005. "The contribution of cross-cultural study to dynamic systems modeling of emotion."
Commentary on Marc D. Lewis, "Bridging emotion theory and neurobiology through
dynamic systems modeling." Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28 (2): 201-202.
• 2002. "Domesticating an Urban Menace: Efforts to Reform Capoeira as a Brazilian National
Sport." International Journal of the History of Sport 19(2): 1-32.
• 2002. "Listening to Capoeira: Phenomenology, Embodiment, and the Materiality of Music."
Ethnomusicology 46 (3): 487-509.

Selected Book Chapters

• 2012. With Daniel Lende. "The Encultured Brain: Development, Case Studies, and Method."
 In The Encultured Brain: Introduction to Neuroanthropology. Daniel H. Lende and Greg
Downey, eds. Pp. 3-22. MIT Press.
• 2012. With Daniel Lende. "Neuroanthropoogy and the Encultured Brain." In The Encultured
Brain: Introduction to Neuroanthropology. Daniel H. Lende and Greg Downey, eds. Pp. 23-
65. MIT Press.
• 2012. With Daniel Lende. "Evolution and the Brain.' In The Encultured Brain: Introduction
to Neuroanthropology. Daniel H. Lende and Greg Downey, eds. Pp. 103-137. MIT Press.
• 2012. "Balancing across cultures: Sensory plasticity." In The Encultured Brain:
Introduction to Neuroanthropology. Daniel H. Lende and Greg Downey, eds. Pp. 169-194.
MIT Press.
• 2012. "Neuroanthropology." In Handbook of Social Anthropology. Richard Fardon (chief
editor), with John Gledhill, Trevor Marchand, Mark Nuttall, Cris Shore,Veronica Strang and
Richard Wilson, eds. Sage.
• 2011. "Learning the 'banana-tree': Self-modification through movement." In Redrawing
Anthropology: Material, Movements, Lines. Tim Ingold, ed. Pp. 77-90. Abingdon, UK:
Ashgate.
• 2010. "Throwing Like a Brazilian: On Ineptness and a Skill-shaped Body." In Anthropology
of Sport and Human Movement. Robert Sands, ed. Pp. 297-326. Lexington Books
(Rowman & Littlefield).
• 2007. "Seeing with a 'Sideways Glance': Visuomotor 'Knowing' and the Plasticity of
Perception." In Ways of Knowing: New Approaches in the Anthropology of Knowledge and
Learning. Mark Harris, ed. Pp. 222-241. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books.
• 2006. With Melissa S. Fisher. "The Anthropology of Capital and the Frontiers of
Ethnography." In Frontiers of Capital: Ethnographic Perspectives on the New Economy. M.
S. Fisher and G. Downey, eds. Pp. 1-30. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
• 2006. "The Information Economy in No-Holds-Barred Fighting." In Frontiers of Capital:
Ethnographic Perspectives on the New Economy. Melissa S. Fisher and Greg Downey, eds.
Pp. 108-132. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Available online:
• 2012. With Tonia Gray. "Blogging with the Facebook Generation: Studying abroad with Gen
Y." Joint meeting of the Australian Association for Research in Education and the Asia-
Pacific Education Research Association (AARE-APERA), World Education Research
Association Focal Meeting. [http://www.aare.edu.au/publications-
database.php/6488/Blogging-with-the-Facebook-generation:-Studying-abroad-with-Gen-Y]
• 2010. "Cultural Variation in Elite Athletes: Does Elite Cognitive-Perceptual Skill Always
Converge?" In W. Christensen, E. Schier, and J. Sutton, eds. ASCS09: Proceedings of the
9th Conference of the Australasian Society for Cognitive Science (pp. 72-80). Sydney,
Australia: Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Studies. doi: 10.5096/ASCS200912
[http://www.cogsci.mq.edu.au/news/conferences/2009/ASCS2009/pdfs/Downey.pdf]
• 2008. "Coaches As Phenomenologists: Para-Ethnographic Work in Sports." Proceedings of
the 2006 Annual Conference for the Australasian Association for Theatre, Drama and
Performance Studies (ADSA), Being There: Before, During and After.