The academic world mourns the loss of Professor Roland Littlewood, a distinguished figure who bridged the disciplines of psychiatry and anthropology. He passed away at the age of 78 after a battle with metastatic pancreatic cancer.
A Life Dedicated to Understanding Culture and Healing
Professor Littlewood served as a professor of psychiatry and anthropology at University College London from 1994 until his retirement in 2012. For over two decades, he was the joint director of UCL’s Centre for Medical Anthropology, an institution dedicated to exploring how cultural values and societal practices shape health, medicine, and healing across the globe.
Born in Leicester, he was the younger son of Robert Littlewood, a Spanish lecturer, and Trudi Littlewood (née Lehner), a lecturer in French and German. His intellectual journey began at Wyggeston Grammar School in Leicester, leading him to train as a doctor at St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College in London. It was at Barts in 1969 that he met his future wife, a nursing student; they married in the hospital's Great Hall in 1975.
Groundbreaking Research and Influential Work
Following medical training, Littlewood specialised in psychiatry at Homerton Hospital in Hackney. He was deeply committed to understanding his patients' worlds, spending extensive time exploring their delusional ideas and how personal healing narratives interacted with scientific understanding.
This commitment led to his seminal work, co-authored with psychiatrist Maurice Lipsedge: Aliens and Alienists: Ethnic Minorities and Psychiatry (1982). The book, now a standard academic text, critically examined how prejudice and social disadvantage profoundly influence mental health.
His passion for cultural context took him to Oxford to study anthropology on a scholarship. His fieldwork was a family affair; his wife and their daughter, Leti (born in 1979), accompanied him to Trinidad. There, he studied the Earth People, a spiritual community led by the charismatic healer known as Mother Earth (Jeanette Baptist). This immersive research, which included living with the community, formed the basis of his 1987 thesis, later published as Pathology and Identity in 1993.
His academic curiosity also took him to Haiti to study voodoo and healing practices, and to Lebanon to observe the Druze sect.
A Legacy of Leadership and Scholarship
Professor Littlewood's leadership extended beyond UCL. He served as President of the Royal Anthropological Institute from 1994 to 1997 and was a visiting fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, in 2007. Even after retirement, he remained engaged as a professor emeritus in UCL's Department of Anthropology until 2024.
Despite his illness, he demonstrated remarkable dedication to his field. With the support of UCL doctors, he completed his final manuscript, Between Anthropology and Psychiatry (co-authored with Simon Dein), which is scheduled for publication in 2026.
He is survived by his wife, his daughter Leti, his grandchildren Mac, Etta, and Daniel, and his older brother, Antony. His work continues to illuminate the intricate connections between mind, culture, and society.
