Greg Downey received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago (1998). After a Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at Columbia University and working as an Assistant Professor at the University of Notre Dame, he moved to Australia in 2006 and joined Macquarie University.

Greg’s first book, Learning Capoeira: Lessons in Cunning from an Afro-Brazilian Art (Oxford University Press, 2005), brought together an experience-centred, phenomenological analysis of the art of capoeira with research in psychology and the neurosciences about the effects of physical education on perception. He has also co-edited volumes, including The Encultured Brain: An Introduction to Neuroanthropology (MIT Press, 2012) with Daniel H. Lende, and Frontiers of Capital: Ethnographic Reflections on the New Economy (Duke University Press, 2006) with Melissa Fisher.

Greg is the former Editor-in-Chief of Ethos, the journal of the Socity for Psychological Anthropology; he often writes about his research and other anthropological interests on the weblog, Neuroanthropology (Neuroanthropology.net). 

Greg's research focuses on biocultural topics in anthropology, including evolution, therapy, agriculture, and the effects of skill acquisition and bodily training on motor and sensory learning. He has been a leader in neuroanthropology. 

Greg is currently working with men in therapy, with vision impaired individuals who echolocate or use active sonar in their daily lives, and with groups of highly skilled individuals, such as free divers. He views these individuals as case studies of how cultural techniques and forms of training work with and alter the human nervous system.

Greg has also conducted a range of applied research in agriculture and Learning and Teaching. His agricultural projects have responded to industry needs, including to understand community acceptance of new technology in agriculture. His educational research has focused on ways to promote greater cross-cultural learning in university students travelling or studying abroad. 

He has helped to supervise a wide range of research student projects, especially in psychological anthropology.

Greg has taught a range of units in anthropology and socio-cultural theory, including running a field school in socio-cultural anthropology in Fiji in collaboration with the University of the South Pacific. He has won awards for his teaching, including the Macquarie University Vice Chancellor's Award for Teaching Excellence in 2013.

Over the course of his career, he has designed and delivered:

• Research Paradigms (Masters of Research core unit in theory)
• Psychological Anthropology: Body, Brain, Culture 
• Culture and Human Rights  
• Wealth, Poverty and Consumption 
• Human Evolution and Diversity
• Doing Ethnography: Ethnographic Field Methods
• Advanced Seminar: Biocultural approaches to sport  
• Introduction to Anthropology 
• Cultural Difference and Social Change 
• Black Music, World Market  
• Radical Social Theory 
• Societies and Cultures of Latin America 
• The Anthropology of Perception 
• Contemporary Civilization (Columbia University undergraduate social theory core)