Professor Barry Hewlett retired in April 2024. He taught at the Pullman campus for five years and at the Vancouver campus for 24 years. He received his PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1987 and held positions at Tulane University (U.S.), Kyoto University (Japan) and Hawassa University and Arba Minch University (Ethiopia). He has conducted research in Africa since 1973 (50+ years) in the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Gabon, Ethiopia, and Cameroon. He authored or edited eight books including Intimate Fathers: The Nature and Context of Aka Pygmy Paternal Infant Care; Ebola, Culture, and Politics (with Bonnie Hewlett); Father-Child Relations; Hunter-Gatherer Childhoods (with Michael Lamb); Diverse Contents of Human Infancy, Human Behavior and Cultural Contexts in Disease Control (with Joan Koss-Chioio) and Social Learning and Innovation in Contemporary Hunter-Gatherers (with Hideaki Terashima). He also published over 100 journal articles and book chapters in a wide range of disciplines including biology, sociology, developmental psychology, public health, tropical medicine, and genetics. He was the first medical anthropologist to be invited by World Health Organization to participate in efforts to control Ebola in Africa and has over 13,700 citations in Google Scholar.
While Dr. Hewlett was in Pullman, he established the following courses: Childhood and Culture; Contemporary Peoples and Cultures of Africa; Sex, Evolution and Human Nature; Medical Anthropology, Anthropology of Epidemic Disease and Bioterrorism, and Genes, Culture, and Human Diversity. While in Vancouver, he was the lead faculty member in establishing the anthropology major and anthropology club in Vancouver and organized a system where graduate students could be in residence at the Vancouver campus during all or a portion of their graduate studies.