Rate My Professor Martin Mills

Professor Martin A. Mills serves as Chair in Anthropology and Head of the Department of Anthropology within the School of Social Science at the University of Aberdeen. He is also Director of the Scottish Centre for Himalayan Research, a position he has held since 2007. Mills earned his MA from the University of St Andrews and his PhD from the University of Edinburgh. Prior to his current role, he lectured and conducted research at the Universities of Edinburgh, St Andrews, and Sussex. He is a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute and holds memberships in the Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth, the International Association for Tibetan Studies, and the International Association of Ladakh Studies. Additionally, Mills has been an Elected Staff Governor at the University of Aberdeen from 2017 to 2023 and an Elected Senator representing Social Sciences.

Mills's research specializations encompass political anthropology and the anthropology of the state, Tibetan and Himalayan systems of governance, Buddhist monasticism and ritual, religion and the state, modern religious movements and insurgencies, indigenous constitutional history of Tibet, economic exchange patterns in state knowledge construction, climate change on the Tibetan Plateau, indigenous relations with land and landscape in ceremonial sovereignty, and conflict in religious states such as historical Tibet. His key publications include Identity, Ritual and State in Tibetan Buddhism: The Foundations of Authority in Gelukpa Monasticism (Routledge, 2003), "The Perils of Exchange: Karma, Kingship and Templecraft in Tibet" (2015), "Exorcising Mauss’ Ghost in the Western Himalayas: Buddhist Giving as Collective Work" (2020), "The 'Trick of Law': The Hermeneutics of Early Buddhist Law in Tibet" (2022), "The Ceremonial State of the Ganden Podrang" (2023), and "Before The Dalai Lamas: The Early Tibetan Lineages of Chenresik" (2025). Mills has significantly influenced policy through his roles as Secretary, Research and Briefings Officer, and Member of the Scottish Parliament's Cross-Party Group on Tibet from 2014 to 2021, as well as Member of the Cross-Party Group on China. He organized the Holyrood parliamentary inquiry into climate change in the Third Pole region in 2019 and has authored briefing papers on Tibetan and Himalayan affairs, including human rights, religious regulation, political sovereignty, international law, and environmental change.