Michael Lambek (BA McGill, MA, PhD Michigan) is a professor and Canada Research Chair emeritus, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto where he has taught since 1978, with intervals at the London School of Economics. He has carried out extensive ethnographic research in the western Indian Ocean, in Mayotte and in northwest Madagascar. He is the author of seven books plus one co-authored book, eight edited/coedited books, and some 60 book chapters and 55 articles in refereed journals. He has served as department chair, University of Toronto Scarborough, President of the Society of the Anthropology of Religion, and edits book series at the University of Toronto Press and at Cambridge University Press. His book Island in the Stream won the Elliott P. Skinner Book Award from the Association for Africanist Anthropology. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2000, was a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin in 2016-17 and delivered a Tanner Lecture to the Department of Philosophy, University of Michigan in 2019. He has supervised 20 doctoral students to completion, 9 postdoctoral fellows, and has been external examiner for 25 doctoral dissertations in 9 different countries.