Anthony Cohen, CBE, FRSE is a British social anthropologist and served as Principal of Edinburgh’s Queen Margaret University. Cohen was born in London in 1946. Educated at Whittingehame College, Brighton, the University of Geneva and the University of Southampton, he is a social anthropologist with specialist interests in personal, social and national identity. He conducted fieldwork in Springdale, Newfoundland (1968–70) on local-level politics; and in Whalsay (1973–90), the longest sustained study of a rural British community ever undertaken. He then did research on personal and national identity in Scotland, and on the literary influences on Scottishness.