Parkin’s focus has been on East Africa where he has carried out a number of years’ fieldwork among different peoples and in different ecologies: the Luo of western Kenya, the Giriama of eastern Kenya, and Swahili-speakers in Zanzibar and Mombasa. He has studied the growth of ethnically mixed urban populations in Kampala, Uganda, where his interest in Luo first started, and in Nairobi, where he developed more fully his interest in Luo. Field research among the Giriama of Kenya began with a study of economic entrepreneurship and continued into an analysis of the role of religion in pastoralism, agriculture and trade. Thereafter he concentrated on Islam among Swahili-speakers, extending this concern from the East African coast to the Hadhramaut, Oman and other areas of the Indian Ocean littoral. More recently he has lectured, published and carried out limited research in China. In later years he has examined concepts of materiality, especially in relation to the human body, and became interested in the evolution of language and in the orchestration of sensory-based semiosis.

He was chairman of the International African Institute and of the Association of Social Anthropologists, was elected fellow of the British Academy, and has sat on various bodies concerned with higher education and the social sciences, both in the UK and France, where he has also held various appointments, including visiting membership of the CNRS.