David Lancy

College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Sociology, Social Work & Anthropolgy

David Lancy is a professor of anthropology at Utah State University. Lancy has authored eight books and more than 60 articles, chapters and reviews in major and peer-reviewed journals. Two of his earlier books have attracted worldwide attention and his seventh book, The Anthropology of Childhood: Cherubs, Chattel, Changelings, has helped launch a new sub-discipline in anthropology. The book is a candidate for two awards, the Stirling Prize for best new book in psychological anthropology, and the J.I. Staley Prize, described as the “Pulitzer Prize” for books in anthropology. The main goal of Lancy’s research is to change the way we think about childhood. “I want to broaden our perspective so that the enormous variation in cultural models of children and their development is acknowledged and becomes incorporated in our policies directed at schooling and child welfare,” Lancy said. Lancy has nurtured the nascent anthropology of childhood field by serving as a board member and webmaster for the relatively new, but 1,000-member strong, American Anthropological Association Childhood Interest Group (AAACIG), and by chairing numerous childhood- and play-related symposia at AAA meetings, the most important and highly attended annual anthropology meetings in the world. In addition, Lancy organized and chaired AAACIG’s inaugural conference, held in Albuquerque, N.M., in February 2009. In 2001, Lancy received the prestigious Carnegie Professor of the Year Award for the state of Utah. He has also mentored graduate and undergraduate students and served as director of the USU Honors program from 1997-2005. While Lancy will retire from Utah State University in September 2011, his next project, an analysis of the cultural foundations of learning and teaching, is already underway. “David Lancy is, without doubt, one of the foremost scholars in the field of anthropology and childhood, both nationally and internationally,” said Heather Montgomery, faculty member in the Centre for Childhood, Development and Learning at the Open University in the United Kingdom. “He is one of the pioneers in the field. Not only does David have an outstanding reputation nationally and internationally, but also in achieving this, he has encouraged and brought on many young scholars. He is unfailingly generous in his time and encouragement of other academics, and his legacy is not simply his own work, but that of others that he has directly and indirectly shaped.”