It is with great sadness that I announce to the Internet research community the loss of one of its own. Mário José Lopes Guimarães Jr. had been a doctoral student at Brunel University in the UK since 2000. On 29 April 2005, shortly after submitting his thesis, Mário was tragically killed in a road accident. In recognition of his work, a posthumous doctorate was awarded by Brunel University at a graduation ceremony last week. Many people may have met Mário at AoIR conferences and virtual methods seminars. He was a passionate scholar and a vibrant and lovely person. There is a tribute to him on the Anthropology Matters web site at http://www.anthropologymatters.com/mario_tribute.htm Mário had been working on a multi-sited ethnography of avatars in development and in use. As an anthropologist influenced by science and technology studies, he was interested to explore the socio-cultural processes that bring these technologies of embodiment into being. Too little of Mário's work was published, but some can be accessed via his web site at http://www.brunel.ac.uk/~hspgmjg/home.html. There is also an online paper on the practicalities of ethnography in virtual worlds at http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/virtualmethods/doingonlineethnography.pdf and a chapter on "Doing anthropology in cyberspace" in C. Hine (ed.) Virtual Methods (Berg, 2005). If you read portuguese, there is an article on his recent work at http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0104-71832004000100006&script=sci_a bstract&tlng=en and you may also be interested in his Brazilian web site at http://www.cfh.ufsc.br/~guima/ In sadness, but also in celebration of a life well-lived, Christine Christine Hine Department of Sociology University of Surrey Guildford, Surrey, GU2 7XH, UK c.hine@surrey.ac.uk http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/christine_hine.htm