Nicholas H. Barker is a social anthropologist from Great Britain. After doing an M.A. at St. Andrews University in Scotland, Nick was awarded the William Wyse scholarship by Trinity College to do a Ph.D. at Cambridge University in England. He then taught for four years at St. Andrews University, first as a tutor then as a full-time lecturer. Nick is currently a research fellow at the East-West Center in Hawaii, and affiliated to the Department of Anthropology and The Center for Philippine Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. In October 1997, Nick will be a visiting fellow for six months at the Graduate School of International Development at Nagoya University in Japan, before returning to Hawaii in April 1998.
As an anthropologist, Nick studies the cross-cultural phenomenon of religious self-mortification, particularly within the Christian world. He has done fieldwork in flagellant communities in Spain (1992) and Italy (1996), but the primary focus of his research is religious self-flagellation and crucifixion by nailing in lowland Christian Philippines. Nick first visited the Philippines in 1984 as an international volunteer with the Institute of Cultural Affairs, and worked in Manila, Bicol, Cebu and Mindanao. In 1985 he returned to the Philippines with funds raised in Britain to help rehabilitate a community in Cebu devastated by a typhoon. In 1987 and 1988, Nick did his first anthropological fieldwork in San Pedro Kutud, a village in San Fernando, capital of Pampanga province, and a community famous for flagellation and crucifixion during Holy Week - rituals Nick witnessed for the first time on Good Friday 1984. In 1990 and 1991, Nick returned to Kutud for longer periods to do doctoral fieldwork. He has done archival research on the Philippines at the University of the Philippines (Diliman), Ateneo de Manila University, the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and the National Library in Canberra, Australia.
Nick's recent research, which he also teaches as a graduate course, examines the phenomenon of religious self-mortification cross-culturally from historical, anthropological and theological perspectives. Aside from Christianity, in Asia alone this includes the Thaipuisam festival of Hindu Tamils in Malaysia and Singapore, the Kataragama festival of Hindus and Sinhala Buddhists in Sri Lanka, the self-mortification of Chinese spirit-mediums in Taiwan, and ritual mortification ceremonies in Indonesia and Thailand.
To contact Nick Barker, please email him at "barkern@ewc.hawaii.edu".
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