Martin Holbraad

Professor Martin Holbraad is Professor of Social Anthropology at University College London (UCL), where he served as Head of Department from 2019-2022. He is Chair of the Research Committee in UCL Anthropology and previously held positions as Tutor of the MSc in Social and Cultural Anthropology (2011-13), Head of the Social Anthropology Section (2011-14), and Vice-Dean for Interdisciplinarity in UCL's Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences (2013-14).

His research primarily focuses on Afro-Cuban religions and revolutionary politics, with theoretical concerns spanning the anthropology of truth and imagination, abstraction, divinity, and the relationship between anthropological conceptualization and art. His work has significantly contributed to the 'ontological turn' in anthropology.

His major publications include Truth in Motion: The Recursive Anthropology of Cuban Divination (2012) and The Ontological Turn: An Anthropological Exposition (2016). From 2014-2019, he led the ERC Consolidator Grant-funded project 'Comparative Anthropologies of Revolutionary Politics' (CARP), which produced significant outputs including Ruptures: Anthropologies of Discontinuity in Times of Turmoil (2019) and the forthcoming Anthropologies of Revolution: Forging Time, People and Worlds. Since 2016, he has served as Editor of the international anthropological journal Social Analysis.

• Member of the Cosmology, Religion, Ontology and Culture Reading and Research Group at UCL (CROC)
• Co-organizer of interdisciplinary research with political scientists at the Centre for Advanced Security Theory in Copenhagen University
• Active contributor to the 'Ethnographic Insights Lab' for public engagement

His research demonstrates a consistent trajectory exploring how different ontological frameworks shape human experience, with particular attention to revolutionary contexts and divinatory practices. His work bridges theoretical innovation with empirical depth, particularly in Cuban contexts.