Royal Institute of Philosophy public lecture by Lambros Malafouris (Oxford)

Human intelligence, affectivity, and self-consciousness are not passive, autonomous or purely internal processes. Rather, they are active, dependent and extensive (relationally constituted) processes shaped by relationships, practices, and material engagements. Humans are simultaneously creators and products of their material environments, shaped by our changing modes of engagement with objects, tools, and techniques. Human evolution is both creative and ongoing, i.e., becoming. The acronym STRANGE is used to describe the process of Situated TRANsactional GEnesis at the heart of human becoming. Human STRANGEness denotes the inherently unique nature of human beings as profoundly embodied and socio-materially embedded (bodily and environmentally dependent and co-constituted) creatures. It highlights that humans cannot be understood solely in terms of biological or cultural processes but must be viewed as fundamentally situated where brain, body and culture conflate. Combining notions of human STRANGEness and the situated person perspective (SPP) the paper is seeking to explore how human dependence and constant engagement with the material world shape the ways we think and experience ourselves.

Lambros Malafouris is Professor of Cognitive and Anthropological Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology and Tutorial Fellow at Hertford College, University of Oxford. His research is cross-disciplinary and focuses on the dynamic, relational interplay between mind, material culture, and environment. Through his Material Engagement Theory (MET), he argues that cognition is not confined to the brain but emerges through our ongoing, reciprocal engagements with the material world. He is the author of People Are STRANGE (MIT press, 2026) (https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:862e5a0c-4cda-45ce-b9dc-b14423808769/files/sxs55mf56p__;!!FapE6t-4AhA!JHRS-mCaUQZrdR91XgXZfWDiotkcS7BWYwEl1HoDMNcj1aPDp-rCWtVf-0oizT4RiUYwoV6cda3-7llFqOq8lvUxf-kBptzdKB2B$), How Things Shape the Mind (MIT press, 2013) and An Anthropological Guide to the Art and Philosophy of Mirror Gazing (Bloomsbury, 2020, with Maria Danae Koukouti). He has edited The Cognitive Life of Things (Cambridge 2010, with Colin Renfrew), The Sapient Mind (2009, Oxford University Press, with Colin Renfrew and Chris Frith), and Material Agency (2008, Springer, with Carl Knappett). Lambros Malafouris was also PI of HANDMADE funded by the European Research Council (ERC)".

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