John Hartigan Jr.

John Hartigan Jr. is a Professor at The University of Texas at Austin, affiliated with the College of Liberal Arts and Department of Anthropology. He serves as Director of the Américo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies and Faculty Graduate Advisor for Cultural Forms. His research spans multispecies ethnography, cultural theory, and the anthropology of science, examining social dynamics across human and nonhuman boundaries.

• Ph.D., University of California, Santa Cruz

His work explores wild horse rituals in Spain (Shaving the Beasts), maize biodiversity in Mexico (Care of the Species), and the cultural dimensions of race and genetics. He teaches courses like Technoculture, Cultural Anthropology, and Animal Studies.

Key themes in his scholarship include redefining sociality through nonhuman species, interrogating racial concepts across biological and cultural domains, and innovating ethnographic methods for multispecies contexts. His recent projects investigate the intersection of myth and AI in The Last Cohort and historical Spanish-Irish connections in a novel about the 1588 Armada.

Hartigan maintains active engagement with public anthropology through newsletters, media projects, and fieldwork-driven narratives that challenge human-centric paradigms.