Patrick Wilcken grew up in Sydney and studied anthropology and Latin American Studies at Goldsmiths College and the Institute of Latin American Studies (now the Institute for the Americas) in London. He currently works as a researcher on Brazil for Amnesty International. Over the last six years Patrick has conducted a dozen research missions to Brazil, documenting human rights abuses in a range of settings, including indigenous reservations, cane plantations and urban slums
As a writer, Patrick has just published his second book – Claude Lévi-Strauss: the poet in the laboratory (Bloomsbury and Penguin US), a biography of France’s pre-eminent social anthropologist. His first book, Empire Adrift: the Portuguese Court in Rio de Janeiro 1808-1821 was published by Bloomsbury in 2004, and in translation in Portugal and Brazil the following year.
Claude Lévi-Strauss: the poet in the laboratory (Penguin Press, 2010)
Empire Adrift: The Portuguese Court in Rio De Janeiro, 1808-1821 (Bloomsbury, 2005)
Caught in the Web
"I was stunned at the incisive level of debate, the packed venues, the calibre of the panellists and audience... getting out for face-to-face intelligent, gritty and gloves-off exchanges of views."
Humphrey Hawksley, BBC World Affairs Correspondent