CUSAS seminar with Professor Marilyn Strathern (University of Cambridge)

CUSAS seminar with Professor Marilyn Strathern (University of Cambridge)Being – or not being – a scholar in one’s mid-eighties

I very much welcome the opportunity to share something about the work I have been doing over the last decade, and to hear what you think of its two trajectories. One has been typically anthropological, following my last visit to PNG in 2015, and involving a piece of collaborative research I’d like to talk about – on how concepts of time are implicated in perceptions of crisis. The other has been extraordinarily educative for me, and demanding, requiring a great deal of writing, though not with academic publications in view – indeed, I have on occasion had to restrain my anthropology. I do not normally speak about these strands together, but the contrast between them feels too compelling not to explore.

 

Professor Dame Marilyn Strathern, is Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge, and a Life Fellow of Girton College. Formerly the William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology, Strathern is famous for her highly influential work on Melanesia and for her relational anthropology.  Her research in Papua New Guinea included gender relations, kinship, and legal anthropology, while later work in the UK turned to reproductive technologies, intellectual property, and audit cultures. Her most recent book (2020) is simply called Relations. She has also served as Mistress of Girton College, and in 2001 she was created DBE. She has also received, among her numerous awards and recognitions, the Huxley Memorial Medal, bestowed by the Royal Anthropological Institute for lifetime achievement at the highest level.

 

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If capacity is reached, places will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact jw2380@cam.ac.uk.