James Andrew Whitaker

James Andrew Whitaker is a social anthropologist whose research focuses primarily on ethnography, ethnology, and ethnohistory in lowland South America (Amazonia). He has worked collaboratively with Indigenous people (particularly Makushi and Akawaio groups) in Guyana since 2012. He is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Southern Mississippi and an honorary research fellow at the University of St Andrews. He holds a PhD in anthropology from Tulane University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship with the CNRS in France. He has held visiting positions at several universities, including the University of Helsinki and Université Paris Nanterre, and has worked on research projects and collaborations across five continents. He is the author of The Shamanism of Eco-Tourism: History and Ontology among the Makushi in Guyana (Cambridge University Press, 2025). He is also the co-editor of several books, including Indigenous Alliance Making: Histories of Agency in Colonial Lowland South America (University of Arizona Press, 2025), Sorcery in Amazonia: A Comparative Exploration of Magical Assault (Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut, 2024), and Climatic and Ecological Change in the Americas: A Perspective from Historical Ecology (Routledge, 2023). In addition, he has published widely in anthropological journals.