Alan Duben was born in New York City in 1943. In 1948 his family moved to suburban New Jersey. His maternal grandmother came from Tykocin. In 1907 she emigrated to the US. In 1973 he received a PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago where he met his wife. Prior to Chicago he taught English in Turkey. From 1973 to 2014 he undertook research and publications on Turkish society while teaching at universities in the US and Turkey. He first came to Poland in 1966. He returned in 2014, and until 2019 undertook research on the ways in which the Jewish past of Tykocin is today remembered. He has just completed a book on the subject.
