Manvir is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California, Davis. He holds a bachelor’s degree in human biology from Brown University and a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He has studied Indigenous psychedelics use in the Orinoco river basin of Colombia and, since 2014, has conducted ethnographic fieldwork with Mentawai communities on Siberut Island, Indonesia, focusing on shamanism and justice. His book is Shamanism: The Timeless Religion.