Roy Ellen

Roy Frank Ellen (born 1947) is a British Professor of Anthropology and Human Ecology with a particular interest in ethnobiology and the cultural transmission of ethnobiological knowledge.

Roy Ellen is a professor of environmental anthropology and ethnobiology at the University of Kent at Canterbury. He studied anthropology at the London School of Economics and Leiden and is most known for his extensive fieldwork in East Indonesia with the Nuaulu people of Seram. Ellen started his fieldwork in the early 1970s and has remained active in the field of environmental anthropology through publishing, teaching and field research. Throughout Ellen's career, especially in his published works there is a reoccurring theme and emphasis on the transmission of cultural knowledge as well as the importance of the history and knowledge of indigenous people.

The British Academy in a 2003 Review describes him, his work, and his contribution to society as follows:

"His work is at the forefront of ecological anthropology. He has recently embarked on a series of major studies of indigenous knowledge and of the consequences of deforestation in parts of Indonesia and in Brunei. He has also contributed notably to work on anthropological history and method."

Roy Ellen has been carrying out ethnobiological fieldwork in eastern Indonesia since the early 1970s, working variously with the Nuaulu people of Seram (with whom he did his doctoral dissertation); on the islands of Sulawesi, Gorom, Seram Laut, Banda and Ambon-Lease; plus some addition fieldwork into the social impacts of logging at Brunei (1991–1994).