John Rowland Ryle | |
|---|---|
 John Ryle teaching onRift Valley Institute Sudans Course | |
| Born | Shrewsbury, Shropshire, United Kingdom |
| Occupation | Writer, anthropologist, film-maker, editor |
| Nationality | British |
| Genre | Ethnography, reportage, essays, literary criticism |
| Subject | Eastern Africa, Brazil, Human Rights, Religion, Visual Arts, Music and Literature |
| Website | |
| johnryle | |
John Rowland RyleOBE is a British writer, anthropologist, social activist, filmmaker, teacher and publisher, with an interest in the history and culture ofEastern Africa.[1] He is co-founder of theRift Valley Institute, andLegrand Ramsey Professor of Anthropology atBard College,New York.
His father, John Creagh Ryle, a medical doctor andalpinist, was ageneral practitioner inShrewsbury, Shropshire, where Ryle was born.[2] His mother, Melody Ryle,[3] née Jackson, was a stalwart of the localFamily Planning Association and a noted amateurbotanist and gardener. Ryle is a grandson of the pioneer ofsocial medicineJohn Alfred Ryle, a nephew of theastronomerSir Martin Ryle, a great-nephew of thephilosopherGilbert Ryle, and a great-great grandson ofJohn Charles Ryle, evangelicalBishop of Liverpool in the last decades of the nineteenth century.
Ryle was educated atShrewsbury School andOxford University, where he graduated in English Language and Literature. He pursued postgraduate studies in social anthropology, conducting fieldwork among the AgarDinka communities in today'sSouth Sudan. In 1975 he became an assistant editor atThe Times Literary Supplement. During the printers' strike at Times Newspapers, he founded, withRichard Boston, the acclaimed but short-lived periodicalQuarto (1978–1981).[4] From 1982 to 1986 he worked for theSunday Times in London as Deputy Literary Editor and, subsequently, as a feature writer. He has written for theLondon Review of Books,[5] theNew York Review of Books,[6] theNew Yorker,[7] theLos Angeles Times and various scholarly periodicals, and is a contributing editor ofGranta.[8]
Ryle also worked as a doorman at theEmbassy Club in Bond Street, London, as aroustabout for theRoyal American Shows and theCanadian Pacific Railway,[9] as ghost-writer ofMick Jagger's unpublished autobiography,[10][11] and as atravel writer.[12]
In the late 1980s, Ryle was a project officer at theFord Foundation in Brazil and lived in an Afro-Brazilian community inSalvador da Bahia. In the 1990s, he worked as a consultant torelief and development organisations inSudan and theHorn of Africa, includingSave the Children Fund (UK). His weekly newspaper column,"City of Words", appeared inThe Guardian from 1995 to 1999. From 1996 to 1997, he was a research fellow ofNuffield College, Oxford. In the 1990s he became an activist in theInternational Campaign to Ban Landmines.
From 2001 to 2017, Ryle was successively chair and executive director of theRift Valley Institute, a research and public information organisation operating in Eastern Africa that he founded withJok Madut Jok andPhilip Winter. He was a member of theInternational Eminent Persons Group, reporting on slavery and abduction in Sudan.[13][14] Since 2007, he has beenLegrand Ramsey Professor of Anthropology atBard College, a liberal arts college in New York state. He has been a board member of theHuman Rights Watch Africa Division,the Media Development Investment Fund and the scholarly journalAfrican Affairs.[15]
In 2022 he established a publishing company,City of Words, concentrating on works of reportage, life-writing and general non-fiction.
Ryle was appointed anOfficer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the Queen's2021 Birthday Honours for services to research and education in Sudan, South Sudan and the Horn of Africa.[16][17][15]
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