John Mack (anthropologist)

In May 2022 a conference celebrating John's distinguished career, contribution to scholarship and support of colleagues and students was organised at the University of East Anglia.

He was made an Hon. life Vice President of The British Institute in Eastern Africa in 2017, after being its president from 2005 to 2011 and prior to that a Board Member.

Since 2004, Mack has been Professor of World Art Studies at the University of East Anglia, Norwich where he was Director of Research in 2007–2008, before becoming the Head of the School of World Art and Museology (2009-2012).

At the University of East Anglia, he has also served on the Sainsbury Research Unit Advisory Board (1999-2015), on the Board of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts (2009-2018) and he co-founded with Anne Haour UEA's Centre for African Art and Archaeology in 2009. Elsewhere he is also the Chair of the Editorial Board of World Art, as well as a member of the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Material Culture and the Journal of Art Historiography.

Mack was elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1994 and became a Fellow of the British Academy in 2009 (emeritus in 2019).

At the British Museum, he had overall responsibility for the Mexican Gallery (1994), the North American Gallery (1999) and the Wellcome Trust Gallery (2003).

Mack has also contributed to a number of other museum organisations. He has been a Board Member of the West African Museums Programme (Dakar, Senegal) (1993-1998), a Trustee of the Horniman Museum and Gardens, London (1998-2011), on the Board of Visitors of the Pitt-Rivers Museum, Oxford (1999-2011) and a Member of the Conseil d’orientation de l’Etablissement public du Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, Paris (1999). Since 2014, he has been a Trustee of the South Asian Decorative Arts and Crafts Collection, Norwich.

Mack has conducted field research in South Sudan and Northern Kenya (1979, 1980), in Madagascar (1984, 1985, 1987), in Zanzibar (1994) and again in Northern Kenya (2008).

Mack held a series of curatorial appointments at the British Museum (initially at the Museum of Mankind) from 1976 to 2004. In May 1976, he became a Research Assistant, before being appointed Assistant Keeper in November 1976 and Keeper of Ethnography (1991-2004). He also served as the British Museum's Senior Keeper from 1997 to 2003.

John Mack attended Campbell College, Belfast before studying for BA (Hon) in Social Anthropology (1971) and MA in The History of Ideas (1972) both at the University of Sussex. He obtained his D.Phil at Merton College, University of Oxford (1975) for a thesis entitled “WHR Rivers and the contexts of anthropology”.

John Mack FBA FSA (born 10 July 1949 in Belfast, Northern Ireland) is a British social anthropologist and art historian specialising in African arts and cultures (particularly Equatorial African and the western Indian Ocean). He is an academic and former museum curator.