Roy Frank Ellen, FBA FRAI (born 1947) is a British professor of anthropology and human ecology, with a particular interest in ethnobiology and the cultural transmission of ethnobiological knowledge. 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."
Primary research area 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).
Early publishing Ellen tackled the debate between nature and culture. Stating that the conception of nature has varied historically and ethnographically and as a result has become cultural. A popular environmental discourse in which the opposition is drawn between the holistic systemic vision of what is viewed as traditional or tribal and the dualism of the modern scientific Christian tradition. In his view nature has become some topological grid dividing the civilised and the uncivilised, which has led to the rejection of the very idea of nature. This view and the different conceptions of nature have given rise to many problems and thus have given ways to assumptions and implications that it is our task to locate and excavate nature (Ellen, 1996). Ellen proposes ways to deal with the categorical status of nature. The first of which is to acknowledge that any one population may generate their own conceptions of nature, which may be inconsistent and contradictory from one another and some may have no concept of nature whatsoever, but it must be acknowledged. The second is to bring down this trend and be able to identify the minimum number of underlying assumptions in which these conceptions are built so as to alleviate the contrasting points of views about nature and focus on the multi-faceted, but ultimately recognisable idea of nature (Ellen, 1988). Dr. Ellen also uses his extensive experience with the Nuaulu to draw on as an example to begin identifying and cultivating cultural phenomena, which explores and permits us to the existence of nature as a domain (Ellen, 1993). He also emphasises the indigenous knowledge of the rainforest in preserving the identity and culture of indigenous people whose ways of life are threatened. He had observed that historically the indigenous people have perceived and interacted with the rainforest in many diverse ways. Diversity has been obscured with the process of globalisation and the undertaking of oversimplifying the relationships, which the people have established with the forest. He implores conservationists to take indigenous knowledge into account and form a judgment based on evidence for that particular situation and not generalisation (Ellen, 1993). Dr. Ellen recognises that individual subsistence techniques differ among particular populations and have different ecological profiles when it comes to energy transfer, limiting factors, and carrying capacity. The effect on the landscape is varied and is due to the degree of human effort that is required. Empirical knowledge of plants and animals and its broad understanding allows them to comfortably co-exist together and gives way to claims of mutual causation that gives rise to a complex notion of nature He includes that although uncut forest is recognised by Nuaulu as a single entity, it contrasts in different ways with other land types depending on context. The Nuaulu's concept of their environment is not one of space in which they traverse, but more like a series of fixed points to which particular clans and individuals are interconnected. These interconnections are practical implications between social and environmental and can be very important (Ellen, 1993). Dr. Ellen's main view, which is perhaps the most important, is that indigenous knowledge and practices must be understood contextually. Outsiders must begin to separate prejudices about our environment and we must apply formal knowledge to different situations. Indigenous knowledge of the rainforest is always situational and varies and ever-changing depending on the situation at hand (Ellen, 1994).
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