HRAF was saddened to learn of the recent passing of Professor William Jankowiak. Bill was an anthropologist and a leading scholar of love, intimacy, marriage, family life, ethnicity, and social change. His work profoundly shaped how many of us think about love cross-culturally.

Bill earned his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1986, before joining the faculty at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he spent much of his career as a Professor of Anthropology and Ethnic Studies.

Throughout a career that spanned four decades, Bill combined rigorous ethnography with broad comparative analysis to illuminate both the diversity and commonality of the human experience.

Over the years, HRAF has mentioned the work of Professor Jankowiak on several occasions. Here are some examples:

Romantic or disgusting? Passionate kissing is not a human universal

Is Romantic Kissing a Cultural Universal? UConn Students Explore the Question with eHRAF

HRAF membership director interviewed for NPR segment on romantic kissing

Understanding Love: Attending the 2024 Love Studies Conference, Canary Islands, Spain

Professor Victor de Munck from the Institute of Asian and Transcultural Studies at Vilnius University shared this eulogy for his friend, Professor William Jankowiak.

Eulogy for William Jankowiak by Victor de Munck

If anthropology or culture itself were indeed superorganic, it would be easy to find Bill at the intersection of volcanic eruptions of heart, ideas, and throat-pounding laughter. Everyone who listened to him came away feeling that he had uncovered another root of human wisdom. His ideas deepened our understanding of what it means to be human and how journeys across cultures reveal universal truths seasoned by local traditions. This to me was Bill – a man who even though intense and always looking to find out something more about human nature, always seemed to find kernels of life hidden from the eyes, ears, and studies of most anthropologists.

I first met Bill around 1995 at a conference where we just happened to sit next to each other. Bill was already a well-known professor and a rising star in anthropology, perhaps the first to weave culture and evolution together to discover that love is a cultural universal and not limited to geographical or cultural domain. He changed the shape, theories, and methods of anthropology and evolutionary psychology.

When Bill spoke, he combined humor, spontaneity, and intelligence. He had the capacity to criticize other people’s work in a way that was always constructive rather than destructive. Bill taught me another way of developing new insights into culture. He was someone who could knit together the warp and woof of anthropology. He was an explorer and a seeker of the truth concerning what culture is, and what it does and does not do. On that note, let me briefly recount some of the contributions of Professor William Jankowiak.

Bill gave legitimacy to the anthropological study of love. He insisted that love deserved the same careful ethnographic attention as kinship, religion, or politics. Much of today’s flourishing scholarship on the anthropology of love stands on foundations that Bill helped to build.

He carried out influential ethnographic research in China, especially Inner Mongolia, documenting courtship, marriage, sexuality, and changing family life. His work helped reshape how anthropologists and evolutionary psychologists think about love, culture, and human universals.

Bill brought together evolutionary, psychological, and cultural perspectives. He refused to accept simple explanations and encouraged anthropologists to think across disciplinary boundaries. Bill mentored generations of anthropologists with generosity, always pushing students and colleagues to ask larger questions rather than settle for conventional answers. He had a remarkable gift for making the world of ideas exciting. Conversations with Bill were never merely exchanges of information; they were intellectual adventures.

Bill’s scholarship was always driven by these questions: what makes us the same, and what makes us different? He reminded us that anthropology matters because people matter. We will miss his laughter, his generosity, his relentless curiosity, and his refusal to stop asking larger questions. The questions he taught us to ask will remain with us.

Farewell, Bill. We will do our best to keep the fire burning.

PHOTO CREDIT:

In Memoriam: William R. Jankowiak, UNLV, August 24, 2026