My Biography
Jane Cowan received a BA summa cum laude in Anthropology at Macalester College in Minnesota (1977), and an MA (1982) and PhD (1988) in Sociocultural Anthropology and Ethnomusicology from Indiana University, Bloomington. She came to Sussex as a Lecturer in 1991, became Senior Lecturer in 2000, Reader in 2003 and was promoted to Professor in 2004. Jane was Head of the Anthropology Department from 2002-2005. She served as Member of the University of Sussex Council elected by Academic Staff from 2012-2018. In 2018-2019 Jane was the Jane and Aatos Erkko Visiting Professor in Studies on Contemporary Society at the University of Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies in Helsinki, Finland. During that period, she continued her research on minorities treaty supervision at the League of Nations with respect to the region of Macedonia, which focuses on petitions submitted to the League and the encounters that they generated. Her book-in-progress is provisionally entitled ‘Minority or nation? Competing justice projects at the League of Nations‘.