Why subscribe to Frontal Lobe?
Advent 2025. I am on a quest to rediscover classical anthropology and produce a list of the Great Books in Anthropology that transcends geographic regions, expertise, and theoretical orientations. We’re no longer talking to each other on common ground. I am returning to anthropology’s roots and recovering insights and literary prose that provide a salve towards the wounds of ideology, identity, and, frankly—a drop in long-form reading, altogether.
Join me in a curious discovery of other cultures and ways of seeing.
Great Books in Anthropology
I started my mission this season of Martinmas in 2025. I have changed as a writer and have returned fully to the fold of the Catholic Church. Culturally, I had not really left it, but I was away. Ironically, it was the atheist David Graeber, anarchist anthropologist, who put me on the path back to religion and its undeniable legacy in Western civilisation and thought. That was the impact of my slow reading of his two works for two years.
Keep track of our syllabus here.
Begin Slow Reading
I began with slow reading, one non-fiction work a year in 2023. I got tired of Blinkist and all the apps summarising for me and telling me to speed read toward 100 books a year—just for bragging rights. As a reverse course, I set out to read one non-fiction book a year, that’s it. No pressure.
Where do I start?
If you need to try it out, here’s where to begin.
In 2023, I read David Graeber and David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything. Click on the link for the entire book chapter list, outline, and addendum of interesting rabbit holes I went down. Below is the first chapter.
In 2024, I searched in vain for another similar ‘world culture survey’ book and ended up with David Graeber’s Debt, The First 5,000 Years. Click on the link for the entire outline and start your own adventure. I’ve learned to boldly go where my interests lie and it took me through humanity’s history and my reversion into the faith!
Start with:
My favourite series is on Chapter 10, The Middle Ages
For the Love of Cod: How Christian Fasting Created the Hansa Fish Trade
I loved it! These books ask the BIG questions missing in our discipline today:
Why are things the way they are right now?
Are there other ways of living? What can we learn from the past that we can bring to our present and future as individuals and as groups?
What are the origins of inequality? How do people organise themselves?
Fun questions. One book. That’s all it takes.
Housekeeping
For now, subscribers receive one chapter a week via the newsletter. I publish on Thursdays.
Addendum - supplemental information from journal articles and other sources that adds depth and perspective to difficult chapters
My Life in Things - my sandbox of ideas and observations
I want to keep my newsletter free and be available to the general public.
My Past Writing Projects
Before Substack, I was active on Medium writing as a qualitative researcher and documenting my journey into UX in 2018. It used to be a culture blog but it has morphed into a professional page as more and more professionals moved in (but also moved out). This explains my piece:
Substack then was very different and happily is now where the writers have roosted (most left Medium). I am ecstatic and surprised to see thoughtful writing and reading communities here.
I have also published a user research culture book as part of learning about how to build a research culture in companies:
Better Research, Better Design by Erin B. Taylor and Melanie T. Uy (free to download)
But in part, the process taught me how to write accessible long-form essays, and work with another published researcher, and a team behind it. Needless to say, producing a published work (even if it is an open-access work) requires several individuals and resources that were given without full compensation.
About Me
I’m an anthropologist based in the Netherlands. I accidentally ended up in the Netherlands from Australia because my graduate supervisor moved here and brought all of us here. And I am thankful for it.
I studied mortuary rituals in the uplands of the Philippines and continued this line of inquiry at the London School of Economics. This led me to focus on questions of kinship, order, and disorder.
It turned out that what I loved about graduate school was the reading. Now that I am outside of academia, I want to try to recreate this creative space here today.
Outside of this identity, I’ve worked as a qualitative researcher and research strategist for companies. I tinker with Obsidian for knowledge management, but have since returned to pen (discovered the joys of clicky Stabilo pointball 0.5) and paper for writing (I maintain a daily journal, but repurpose a Moleskine XL Weekly journal for my ideas). Although I try not to drink after 12 noon, I am stubborn about my Saturday coffee routine at my secret cafe. I remain a crime thriller enthusiast.
To learn more about the company that provides the tech for this newsletter, visit Substack.com.
