Roy Frank Ellen, FBA FRAI (born 1947) is a British professor of anthropology and human ecology, with a particular interest in ethnobiology and the cultural transmission of ethnobiological knowledge. Ellen is a professor of environmental anthropology and ethnobiology at the University of Kent at Canterbury. He studied anthropology at the London School of Economics and Leiden and is most known for his extensive fieldwork in East Indonesia with the Nuaulu people of Seram. Ellen started his fieldwork in the early 1970s and has remained active in the field of environmental anthropology through publishing, teaching and field research. Throughout Ellen's career, especially in his published works there is a reoccurring theme and emphasis on the transmission of cultural knowledge as well as the imp