Thomas Cousins

Dr. Thomas Cousins is the Clarendon-Lienhardt Associate Professor in the Social Anthropology of Africa at the University of Oxford and a Tutorial Fellow in Human Sciences at St Hugh's College. His research explores intersections of health, labor, kinship, and value systems in southern Africa, particularly focusing on nutrition, pharmaceuticals, and postcolonial governance.

• British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship (2023-2024) for ethnography of “post-tuberculosis”

Thomas's fieldwork spans South Africa, addressing global health surveillance, welfare, communications technologies, zoonosis, and urban non-human life. His monograph, The Work of Repair: Capacity after Colonialism in the Timber Plantations of South Africa (2023, 2024), examines labor dynamics and historical reinventions of livelihoods in KwaZulu-Natal. Current projects include anthropologies of pharmaceuticals, the microbiome, and governance in the Global South.

Recent publications analyze repair practices (2025), VR in anthropological research (2025), and zoonotic disease governance (2022). He investigates metabolism-immunity intersections, urban animals, and post-apartheid health systems, often linking these to gender and kinship structures.

• 2025: Co-authored chapter on fragility and repair
• 2024: Comparative analysis of gut health across cultures
• 2023: Metabolic governance in post-apartheid South Africa

• 2021: Work on global health climates
• 2020: Contributions to conservation ethics

Thomas mentors eight DPhil students and collaborates on projects related to health, environment, and livelihoods. He advocates for decolonized research frameworks and interdisciplinary approaches.