The RAI promotes the public understanding of anthropology, as well as the contribution anthropology can make to public affairs and social issues. It includes within its constituency not only academic anthropologists, but also those with a general interest in the subject, and those trained in anthropology who work in other fields.
History
The institute's fellows are lineal successors to the founding fellows of the Ethnological Society of London, who in February 1843 formed a breakaway group of the Aborigines' Protection Society, which had been founded in 1837. The new society was to be 'a centre and depository for the collection and systematisation of all observations made on human races'.
Between 1863 and 1870 there were two organisations, the Ethnological Society and the Anthropological Society. The Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (1871) was the result of a merger between these two rival bodies. Permission to add the word Royal was granted in 1907. In 2020 the institute was awarded a Charter by the Privy Council.
Anthropology Today is a bimonthly publication aiming to provide a forum for the application of anthropological analysis to public and topical issues, while reflecting the breadth of interests within the discipline of anthropology. It is committed to promoting debate at the interface between anthropology and areas of applied knowledge such as education, medicine and development; as well as that between anthropology and other academic disciplines.
Anthropological Index Online was launched in 1997. The Index is an online bibliographic service for researchers, teachers and students of anthropology worldwide. Access is free to individual users; institutional users (except those in developing countries) pay an annual subscription. Major European and other languages of scholarship are covered, and new material is added on a continuing basis.
The Indian Antiquary was published under the authority of the Council of the Royal Anthropological Institute from 1925 to 1932.
RAI Collection
The RAI has a unique reference and research collection comprising photos, films, archives and manuscripts.
The photographic library consists of over 75,000 historic prints, negatives, lantern-slides and other images, the earliest dating from the 1860s. The photo library illustrates the great diversity and vitality of the world's cultures as well as the history of photographic image-making itself.
The RAI is actively involved in developing ethnographic film and video, as a mode of anthropological enquiry and as an educational resource. It has an extensive collection of videos, copies of which are available for sale for educational and academic purposes. Films can be studied and previewed onsite.
The archive and manuscript collection spans a period of over 150 years, providing a unique historical record of the discipline and of the Institute itself. Much unpublished textual and visual material entrusted to the RAI over the years is held in the manuscript collection, which is being conserved and catalogued on a continuing basis.
Access to the RAI Collection is free to all RAI Fellows, Members, Student Associates and all undergraduate students by prior appointment. Others may visit the Collection on payment of an access fee.
The RAI has a close association with the British Museum's Anthropology Library, which incorporates the former RAI Library given to the Museum in 1976. The Library is located within the Centre for Anthropology at the British Museum, and is effectively Britain's national anthropological library. All may use the Library on site; RAI Fellows may borrow books acquired by the RAI.
The Huxley Memorial Medal and Lecture was established in 1900 in memory of Thomas Henry Huxley to identify and acknowledge the work of scientists, British or foreign, distinguished in any field of anthropological research. The highest honour awarded by the Royal Anthropological Institute, it is awarded annually by ballot of the council. The recipient delivers a lecture that is usually published.[1][2]
Rivers Memorial Medal
The Medal was founded in 1923 by the Council of the Institute in memory of its late President, William Halse Rivers, originally for 'anthropological work in the field'. However, in the 1960s the rules were amended to reflect anthropological work in a broader sense. The Medal shall be awarded for a recent body of work published over a period of five years which makes, as a whole, a significant contribution to social, physical or cultural anthropology or archaeology. Recipients[3] include:
From time to time, the RAI runs lectures, workshops and other special events on topical issues. Its International Festivals of Ethnographic Film, run every two years in partnership with UK universities and other hosts, are a recognised part of the international ethnographic film calendar. Competitions for the Film Prizes attract entries from film-makers throughout the world.[4]
Individuals seeking full Fellowship status are usually required to be proposed by current Fellows who personally know the potential member. Fellowship in the institute is primarily for persons who have professional or academic achievement in the field of the study of humankind or the social sciences. Fellows are elected by the RAI Council, and are entitled to use the honorific post-nominal letters FRAI.
The RAI has approximately 1800 Fellows and Members
Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard FBA FRAI was an English anthropologist who was instrumental in the development of social anthropology. He was Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford from 1946 to 1970.
Sir Edward Burnett Tylor was an English anthropologist, and professor of anthropology.
The Ethnological Society of London (ESL) was a learned society founded in 1843 as an offshoot of the Aborigines' Protection Society (APS). The meaning of ethnology as a discipline was not then fixed: approaches and attitudes to it changed over its lifetime, with the rise of a more scientific approach to human diversity. Over three decades the ESL had a chequered existence, with periods of low activity and a major schism contributing to a patchy continuity of its meetings and publications. It provided a forum for discussion of what would now be classed as pioneering scientific anthropology from the changing perspectives of the period, though also with wider geographical, archaeological and linguistic interests.
Sir William Henry Flower was an English surgeon, museum curator and comparative anatomist, who became a leading authority on mammals and especially on the primate brain. He supported Thomas Henry Huxley in an important controversy with Richard Owen about the human brain and eventually succeeded Owen as Director of the Natural History Museum in London.
Meyer Fortes FBA FRAI was a South African-born anthropologist, best known for his work among the Tallensi and Ashanti in Ghana.
Alfred Cort Haddon, Sc.D., FRS, FRGS FRAI was an influential British anthropologist and ethnologist. Initially a biologist, who achieved his most notable fieldwork, with W. H. R. Rivers, Charles Gabriel Seligman and Sidney Ray on the Torres Strait Islands. He returned to Christ's College, Cambridge, where he had been an undergraduate, and effectively founded the School of Anthropology. Haddon was a major influence on the work of the American ethnologist Caroline Furness Jayne.
The Digital Himalaya project was established in December 2000 by Mark Turin, Alan Macfarlane, Sara Shneiderman, and Sarah Harrison. The project's principal goal is to collect and preserve historical multimedia materials relating to the Himalaya, such as photographs, recordings, and journals, and make those resources available over the internet and offline, on external storage media. The project team have digitized older ethnographic collections and data sets that were deteriorating in their analogue formats, so as to protect them from deterioration and make them available and accessible to originating communities in the Himalayan region and a global community of scholars.
Dame Ann Marilyn Strathern, DBE, FBA is a British anthropologist, who has worked largely with the Mount Hagen people of Papua New Guinea and dealt with issues in the UK of reproductive technologies. She was William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge from 1993 to 2008, and Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge from 1998 to 2009.
Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf or Christopher von Fürer-Haimendorf FRAI was an Austrian ethnologist and professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies at London. He spent forty years studying tribal cultures in Northeast India, in the central region of what is now the state of Telangana and in Nepal. He was married to British ethnologist of India and Nepal, Betty Barnardo.
Sir Edward William Brabrook was an English civil servant, author, and anthropologist with a special interest in folklore. He was a member of the Folklore Society and a fellow of Society of Antiquaries of London and was awarded the silver Guy Medal in 1909.
Margaret Lock is a distinguished Canadian medical anthropologist, known for her publications in connection with an anthropology of the body and embodiment, comparative epistemologies of medical knowledge and practice, and the global impact of emerging biomedical technologies.
William Buller Fagg was a British curator and anthropologist. He was the Keeper of the Department of Ethnography at the British Museum (1969–1974), and pioneering historian of Yoruba and Nigerian art, with a particular focus on the art of Benin.
John Henry Hutton FRAI was an English-born anthropologist and an administrator in the Indian Civil Service (ICS) during the period of the British Raj. The period that he spent with the ICS in Assam evoked an interest in tribal cultures of that region that was of seminal importance. His research work was recognised subsequently with his appointment to the chair of William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge and with various honours.
Wendy Rosalind James, was a British social anthropologist and academic. She was Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford from 1996 to 2007, and President of the Royal Anthropological Institute from 2001 to 2004.
James Philip Mills CSI, CIE, FRAI was a member of the Indian Civil Service and an ethnographer.
Frederick William Rudler FGS FRAI was an English mineralogist, geologist, anthropologist, and natural scientist.
Brenda Zara Seligman was a British anthropologist. She was awarded the Rivers Memorial Medal in 1933 for five years of fieldwork. She married fellow ethnologist Charles Seligman. After he died in 1940, she continued to extend their private museum collections. She rose to be vice-president of the Royal Anthropological Institute and to leave vast collections to leading British museums.
Howard Morphy is a British anthropologist who has conducted extensive fieldwork in northern Australia, mainly among the Yolngu people. He was founding director of the Research School of Humanities and the Arts at the Australian National University and is currently a distinguished professor of anthropology.
The Huxley Memorial Medal and Lecture is a lecture and associated medal that was created in 1900 by the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland to honour the anthropologist Thomas Henry Huxley. The lecture and medal are awarded annually to any scientist who distinguishes themselves in any field of anthropological research. Thomas Huxley was fortunate to have another memorial lecture named his honour, The Huxley Lecture that was instituted by the members of Charing Cross Hospital Medical School in 1896.
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