Professor Scott Atran

scott.atran@pmb.ox.ac.uk

Scott Atran is a Research Fellow for the Changing Character of War Centre at the University of Oxford. His research focus is on the causes and solutions to intergroup conflict, environmental disputes and management, influence operations, and Great Power competition. He is also a Founding Fellow at the Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the university, and a research associate in the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography.

Atran is co-founder and science director at Artis International, a field-based scientific institute conducting field research in conflict areas and developing online tools for managing socio-political conflict and competition. He is also Research Professor at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy and Institute for Social Research, and Emeritus Director of Research in Anthropology at France’s National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the Institut Jean Nicod at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris.

Atran has studied and written about the limits of rational choice and the importance of “devoted actors” in cultural, political and religious conflicts. He also produced articles and books on indigenous environmental management and the cross-cultural foundations of biological classification. He has done fieldwork with terrorists and other violent actors, as well as with political leaders and Native American peoples; and he has helped to set up indigenously managed forest reserves and has worked with, and addressed, the United Nations Security Council on problems of “Youth, Peace, and Security.”

Atran holds a PhD from Columbia University, an MA from Johns Hopkins University, and a BA from Columbia College. He is an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.