James is a postdoctoral research fellow with the Learning 'Nature' Project. After studying philosophy and anthropology at the London School of Economics, he completed the 'BPhil' and DPhil in philosophy at Oxford. His work grapples with what it is to ascribe 'life', 'mind' and 'experience' to oneself and others. He believes that an individual 'as such' is neither a 'thing' (an entity made of stuff) nor 'not' a thing: that an individual and 'what it is' can only be elucidated in terms of special dances in language within communities. If this view is correct, it has deep implications for how we should understand mindedness in connection with reality, the constitution of bodies and selves in environments, and how one may learn from the Traditions of others. His thought is influenced particularly by Ludwig Wittgenstein, the German Romantics, Indian philosophy and the broader discourse on 'animist' ontologies.