An anthropologist and multi-award writer (fiction, nonfiction, screen) Ruth was born in Derry, Northern Ireland, in 1933. Her first education was in Ballymore church school, a small school in Donegal, then in Derry and a Quaker school in York, after which she studied classics and anthropology, with top results in each, at the University of Oxford, followed by field research on story-telling in West Africa (resulting in an Oxford anthropology doctorate) and university teaching in Africa.

She is currently an EmerItus Professor (Social Sciences) of the Open University; Fellow and Rivers Memorial Medallist of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland; Fellow of the British Academy and of the American Folklore Society; Member of the Finnish Literature Society and Folklore Fellows; Honorary Doctor of the University of Ulster; Honorary Fellow of Somerville College Oxford; and OBE (presented by the Queen in 2000) for services to education.

She is author of many prize-winning books with publishers such as Routledge, and Oxford, Cambridge, Wales and Indiana University Presses, also of poetry, screenplays, children’s books, and literary fiction (notably the prize-winning Kate-Pearl series); internationally recognised for her work, her publications pioneered innovative approaches in two major research areas (theory and ethnography of oral/performed literature with her Oral Literature in Africa (1970/2012) and Oral Poetry (1977/ 2026), and ethnography of music with The hidden musicians, music in an English town [Milton Keynes] (1989/2007). 

Her research, still active, is mainly on the comparative anthropology of artistic/creative activities (especially literature, language, and music), communication, including extrasensory and dream forms and “hidden” and often unnoticed activities and people (like amateur musicians, non-university researchers and local, mostly Milton Keynes, taxi drivers).

Her academic writing, also still continuing, focuses on much the same areas but now also includes a study of the 300,000 year human journey to where we are now, a fascinating topic currently attracting wide interest. She expects to publish an account based on the latest anthropological, archaeological and scientific evidence in the coming years (2006/7). She is also aiming to expand her portfolio of 13 screenplays (all multi award, three produced).

Her work is influenced by earlier classical studies (above all Homer), by the music and drama of Greek lyric metres, and by the rhythms and inspiration of Irish and African story-telling.

Ruth loves music and singing (specially, Irish and contrapuntal music), nature, and the sound of the sea. Following her mother she has a wild imagination and finds that her novels and screenplays arise not from deliberate planning but from inspiration born in some inexplicable way in the liminal magic place of sleep.

She has three wonderful daughters (their beloved father is now walking in Gid’s garden), five grandchildren and one great grandchild) and now lives in the lovely Shenley Wood retirement village in Milton Keynes, where she has made many new friends. She looks out on an ancient oak wood and reflects on the happiness in which she has lived her life.

 

July 2026