Phillippe Descola was born in Paris in 1949. He obtained a master’s degree in philosophy before studying anthropology under the supevision of Claude Lévi-Strauss. In 1982, he received his doctorate from the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. He has been a guest lecturer at the universities of Cambridge, Manchester and Oxford, and at the LSE. Two of his previous books have been translated into English: ‘In the Society of Nature’ (CUP, 1994) and, with Gisli Pálson, ‘Nature and Society’ (Routledge, 1996). He is presently a Professor of Anthropology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris.
