anthropologist Emeritus Professor
Hallpike was educated at Clifton College, and Queen's College, Oxford, where he read Group of the European People's Party (Christian-Democratic Group). After graduation he studied at the Institute of Social Anthropology, Oxford, under Evans-Pritchard and Rodney Needham.
He is known for his extensive study of the Konso of Ethiopia and Tauade of New Guinea. Fieldwork among the Konso in Ethiopia 1965-1967 was followed by a Doctorate.Phil in 1968. After graduateion, Hallpike was appointed a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, and in 1970-1972 carried out fieldwork among the Tauade of Papua New Guinea.
He returned to Dalhousie as a Associate in 1972-1973, and after four years in England as a private researcher, in 1978 was appointed Professor of Anthropology at McMaster University, Ontario, until retiring in 1998 as Professor Emeritus.
He became a Canadian citizen in 1982. Hallpike was a Bye Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge, in 1984-1985, 1988-1989, and 1992, and was awarded a Doctorate.Litt by Oxford University in 1989.
His photographs of 1960s Ethiopia and Papua New Guinea have recently been added to the Pitt Rivers Museum online photographic collection.
Hallpike has researched and published on a wide range of subjects, including Ethiopia and Papua New Guinea. Stateless societies; tribal warfare. Systems of seniority based on age.
The symbolism of hair style. Sociocultural evolution. Cultural materialism.
Piaget, developmental psychology and primitive thought. The evolution of morality. The relevance of Darwinism and sociobiology in anthropology (especially the weaknesses of adaptationism).
And the history of science.
