Dr Charles Pigott

My research focuses on the indigenous cultures and languages of Latin America, particularly the oral and written literature of the Maya and Quechua. In view of the fact that such cultures often have very different interpretative frameworks to the ‘Western’ academic tradition, I combine the perspectives of several disciplines in order to attain a holistic understanding. The main disciplines I dialogue with are comparative literature, anthropology, linguistics and philosophy, but my work also has relevance to fields such as psychology, sociology and ecology.

Upon completion of my PhD in 2013, I became interested in the parallels between the Andes and Mesoamerica: their historical significance as cradles of civilization; their contemporary indigenous populations who are experiencing similar cultural processes within Latin America; the central importance of nature in the indigenous worldviews. Further research revealed a key ecological similarity: Mesoamerica and the Andes are the world’s top hotspots for vertebrate diversity. Despite these important similarities, I discovered that there are relatively few comparative studies of Mesoamerica and the Andes. This motivated my application for, and subsequent acceptance of, a Mexican government scholarship held at the Autonomous University of the Yucatan, Mexico, where I learned the Yucatec Mayan language, gained expertise in the Maya cultural context, and delivered a 20-hour self-crafted course in linguistic anthropology in Spanish. As a Research Associate of the Zoology Department at the University of Oxford, I also helped in the development of the Ethno-ornithology World Archive, an Internet database of the importance of birds in world cultures.