He received his PhD in cultural anthropology from University of California, Santa Cruz, in 2011. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Penn Humanities Forum and taught in the anthropology departments of University of Pennsylvania and Brandeis University. His ethnographic examination of the social circulation of DNA connects questions about genetic identities and politics to debates about postcolonial citizenship. Tamarkin is currently working on a book manuscript, Jewish Blood, African Bones: The Afterlives of Genetic Ancestry, about the politics of race, religion, and recognition among Lemba South Africans leading up to and in the aftermath of their participation in genetic tests that aimed to demonstrate their links to Jews.