Jeremy Narby

Jeremy Narby is a Canadian anthropologist who lives in Switzerland. He is one of the world’s leading researchers and authors on the subject of the awareness of nature and traditional knowledge of the Amazonian peoples. He graduated in History at the University of Kent at Canterbury (UK) and earned a doctorate in anthropology from Stanford University (USA). He spent two years among the Ashaninca aboriginals of the Amazon, studying the way they use their natural resources. Since 1989 he is in charge of various projects that are developed in collaboration with the Swiss NGO Nouvelle Planète, including projects on providing land title deeds, bilingual education, sustainable use of natural resources, preservation of knowledge about plant properties, and environmental surveillance over the behavior of petrol companies in the Amazon. He has written several books on shamanic knowledge systems and their relation with western science, such as Shamans Through Time: 500 Years on the Path to Knowledge (2001) and Psychotropic Mind: The World According to Ayahuasca, Iboga and Shamanism (2010). With an interest in amazonian Vegetalismo as a vehicle to knowledge, he has sponsored scientific expeditions to the Amazon aimed at studying aboriginal knowledge systems.