Michael D. Fischer is an anthropologist who has worked mainly in the
Punjab
and
Swat
in Pakistan, and the
Cook Islands. His major interests are in the representation and structure of indigenous
knowledge, cultural informatics, and the interrelationships between ideation and the material contexts
within which ideation is expressed.
Fischer is Professor of Anthropological Sciences in the Department of Anthropology at the
University of Kent and is currently Director of the Centre for Social Anthropology and Computing, the
University of Kent at Canterbury.
Email address:
M.D.Fischer@ukc.ac.uk
Surface Mail:
Department of Anthropology
The University of Kent at Canterbury
Canterbury, CT2 7NS
United Kingdom
Tele: +44 1227 823144/823942
FAX : +44 1227 827289
Michael Denley Fischer
Degrees.
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B.A.1974, M.A 1980, Ph.D. 1986, University of Texas, Austin, Texas in Anthropology and
Linguistics.
Posts and Positions.
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2005 - Professor of Anthropological Sciences, University of Kent.
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2002 - Reader in Anthropological Sciences, University of Kent.
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1993- Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology and Computing, University of Kent.
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1990- Director, Centre for Social Anthropology and Computing, University of Kent.
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1985-92 Lecturer in Social Anthropology and Computing, University of Kent.
Selected Publications
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1991 Fischer. M. and A. Finkelstein. A case study in social knowledge representation:
arranging a marriage in urban Pakistan, in Qualitative Knowledge and Computing, eds. N Fielding and R
Lee. Sage. (with A. Finkelstein)
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1994 Applications in Computing for Social Anthropologists, ASA Research Methods Series,
Routledge.
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1994 "Modelling Complexity: Social Knowledge and Social Process". in When
History Accelerates: essays on the study of rapid social change ed. C. Hann.
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1995 "Computer-assisted Ethnographic Research". in Information Technology in
Social Sciences Research, ed. R. Lees, UCL Press.
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1997 Fischer, M., O. Kortendick and D. Zeitlyn. The APFT Content Coding System.. CSAC
Monographs, Canterbury.
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1998 Counting Things and Interpreting Ideas: Anthropological Conventions in the Use of
"Hard" Versus "Soft" Models, in Postmodern Applications to Natural Resources
Development. ed. M. Fischer, CSAC Monographs, Canterbury.
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2000 Fischer, M. and W. Lyon "Model Marriage in Pakistan". Kinship and
substance in South Asia. ed. Rao and Boeck.
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2002a "Indigenous knowledge and Expert Knowledge in Development". The
contribution of indigenous knowledge to economic development, ed. Silatoe and Bicker. Harwood.
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2002b "Integrating Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Culture : The
"Hard" and the "Soft"`. R. Trappl (ed), Cybernetics and Systems, Vol 1. Vienna.
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2002c Classification, Symbolic Representation and Ritual: Information vs meaning in
cultural processes R. Trappl (ed), Cybernetics and Systems, Vol 1I. Vienna.
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2002 Bharwani, S., M. Fischer and N. Ryan 'Modelling Adaptive Dynamics and Social
Knowledge' R. Trappl (ed), Cybernetics and Systems, Vol 1I. Vienna.
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2002 Fischer, M., O. Kortendick and D. Zeitlyn. The CSAC Context Coding System.. CSAC
Monographs, Canterbury.
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2002 Zeitlyn, D. and M. Fischer `Ritual, ideation and performance: A Case Study of
Multimedia in Anthropological Research - the Mambila Nggwun Ritual' R. Trappl (ed), Cybernetics and
Systems, Vol 1. Vienna.
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2004 'Integrating Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Culture : The "Hard" and
the "Soft"'. Cybernetics and Systems.35:2/3 pp147-162
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2004b 'Culture and Indigenous Knowledge Systems: Emergent order and the internal
regulation of shared symbolic systems' Cybernetics and Systems Research 2004
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2005a 'Culture and Indigenous Knowledge Systems: Information, Symbol and Knowledge'
Cybernetics and Systems, November 2005
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2005b Editor (with Dwight Read and Stephen Lyon (UCLA)) Structure and Instantiation -
Special Issue of Cybernetics and Systems to appear November 2005.
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2005c Kinship Algebra Expert System (with Dwight Read). A computer program and
documentation for formal modelling of kinship terminologies and the simulation of populations that under
these models. http://Kaes.anthrosciences.net. CSAC Monographs, Canterbury.
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2005d The CSAC Context Coding System. with O Kortendick and D Zeitlyn. CSAC Monographs,
Canterbury
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2006 Editor - Special Anthropology Issue of Social Science Computing Review to appear
spring 2006.
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See also http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk
Grants
I have received grants from the ESRC, AHRB, SERC, MRC, HEFCE, JISC, Leverhulme and Nuffield, on
topics including ethnography of Pakistan and the Cook Islands, formal analysis, multi-media databases,
coding methods, virtual reality, performance and large scale networked databases, historical
anthropology and textual markup
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