June 2009

The President of the RAI, Professor Roy Ellen FBA, delivered his Presidential Address on 9 April in Bristol, during the Annual Conference of the Association of Social Anthropologists. Professor Ellen’s title was ‘Theories in anthropology and anthropological theories’. We are grateful to the ASA and the University of Bristol for hosting this event.

Annual General Meeting 2009. The AGM will be held on Thursday 17 September, at 4.30 pm in the Stevenson Lecture Theatre, British Museum, London WC1. It will be followed at approximately 5.30 by the 2009 Curl Lecture, which will be given by Dr Joost Fontein of Edinburgh University. Dr Fontein’s provisional title is ‘Graves, ruins and belonging in southern Zimbabwe: Towards an anthropology of proximity’. The full programme for the event will be advertised in the August issue of AT.

The Huxley Lecturer and Medallist for 2009 will be Professor Ian Hodder of Stanford University. Professor Hodder’s Huxley Lecture, entitled ‘Human-thing entanglement: Towards an integrated archaeological perspective’, will be given on Monday 2 November in the Stevenson Lecture theatre, British Museum, London WC1 (start time tba).

RAI Fellows should now have received their copy of the 2009 Special Issue of the JRAI, Islam, politics, anthropology, edited by Benjamin Soares and Filippo Osella. The 2010 Special Issue, Making knowledge, edited by Trevor Marchand, will be published by Wiley-Blackwell in early 2010. We expect to announce the Special Issue for 2011 towards the end of this year. A call for proposals for the 2012 Special Issue appears in this issue of AT (submission deadline 30 October 2009).

Preparations are in full swing for the 11^th RAI International Festival of Ethnographic Film, to be held in Leeds from 1-4 July. The programme is now online and registration is open: visit www.raifilmfest.org.uk. For enquiries please contact the Film Officer on film@therai.org.uk.

The 2009 London Anthropology Day for Schools, organized by the RAI in association with the British Museum, will take place in the Museum’s Clore Education Centre on Thursday 9 July. For information and to book free places, visit www.londonanthropologyday.co.uk.

Leach-RAI Fellowships. The Trustees of the Esperanza Trust, which supports the Leach-RAI Fellowship Programme together with the hosting university, announce that 2010-2011 will be a fallow year for the programme following the conclusion of NUI Maynooth’s term as host. We expect to issue a call for offers to host the Fellowship programme shortly, and to resume the programme in 2011-12.

Summer closure. The RAI offices will be closed from Monday 24 to Monday 31 August, reopening on Tuesday 1 September.

April 2009

The 2009 AGM will be held during the second half of September, on a date to be announced. It will be followed by the 2009 Curl Lecture, to be given by Dr Joost Fontein of Edinburgh University. Dr Fontein’s provisional title is ‘Graves, ruins and belonging in southern Zimbabwe: Towards an anthropology of proximity’. We expect to announce full details of the AGM in the June and August issues of AT.

The Huxley Lecturer and Medallist for 2009 will be Professor Ian Hodder (details tba).

The seminar series ‘Reviewer meets reviewed’, co-organized by the RAI and the Centre for Anthropology at the British Museum, was inaugurated on 12 February at the Centre. The idea behind the series is to bring together the authors of books reviewed in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute and their reviewers, for a discussion with an invited audience. See above for a report on the inaugural event.

The RAI’s Educational Outreach Programme contributed to the 2009 ESRC Festival of Social Science by organizing two public events: ‘The social life of plants’ and ‘Exploring food: Connecting communities’, held at the Royal Botanic Gardens (Kew) and the British Museum on 7 and 8 March respectively. Both events attracted large and responsive audiences drawn from the general public. A series of related film screenings (‘upstairs@therai’), also open to the public, followed the events.

The Educational Outreach programme has also produced two useful brochures: Discover anthropology! A guide and Careers in anthropology: A guide. Copies can be obtained by contacting the Education Officer on education@therai.org.uk.

Preparations are in full swing for the 11th RAI International Festival of Ethnographic Film, to be held in Leeds on 1-4 July (see announcement in this issue of AT). For all enquiries please contact the Film Officer on festival@therai.org.uk.

The 2009 London Anthropology Day for Schools, organized by the RAI in association with the British Museum, will take place in the Museum’s Clore Education Centre on Thursday 9 July. For details please contact the Education Officer on education@therai.org.uk.

Library news and request. The Centre for Anthropology Library and RAI are now able to post regular lists of new book acquisitions on the RAI website. Updated lists will appear monthly. All are encouraged to visit the site on http://www.therai.org.uk for this new service. RAI Fellows may borrow books donated by the RAI. The Library also asks all RAI Fellows who publish books to remember the Library when considering recipients for copies of their work donated by the publisher. Books for donation can be mailed to the Library at: Centre for Anthropology Library, British Museum, Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DG. Copies may also be delivered to the Library between 10.00 and 16.45 (Monday-Wednesday, Friday) and 12.00 and 19.00 (Thursday). Alternatively authors might ask their publisher to donate a copy directly to the Library, as this brings excellent publicity to the publisher.

We have been advised that the second-hand department of Waterstone’s bookshops is always interested in acquiring academic libraries, however large or small. For details contact Philip Youren on 0207 636 1577 x 243, or Philip.youren@gowerst.waterstones.co.uk.

February 2009

A fascinating Wellcome Medal Lecture was delivered on 8 December by Professor Luigi Capasso of Chieti University, Italy, on ‘The paleobiology of the victims of the volcanic eruption of Herculaneum’ on 25 August, 79 AD. The event was jointly organized by the RAI and the Wellcome Trust, which funds the biennial RAI Wellcome Medal award. The venue was the Wellcome Collection, London. We look for-ward to a new stage of close co-operation between the RAI and the Wellcome Trust in the field of medical anthropology. We are pleased to announce that the Leach-RAI Fellowship for 2008-09 has been awarded to Dr Jamie Cross. The Fellowship pro-gramme is currently hosted at the University of Maynooth, Republic of Ireland. A call for applications for the 2009-2010 Fellowship is published in this issue of AT.

Professor Roy Ellen, President of the RAI, will deliver his Presidential Address at 1.15 pm on Thursday 9 April 2009, during the Annual Conference of the Association of Social Anthropologists at the University of Bristol. Professor Ellen’s title is ‘Theories in anthro-pology and anthropological theory’. All are welcome, whether registered for the main conference or not. We thank the ASA and the University for their hospitality.

FOR SALE - RAI PUBLICATIONS
A complete set of Man / JRAI and RAIN / Anthropology Today covering a 41-year period (1966-2007) is available for sale. Price to be negotiated. Contact: randunu8@gmail.com.

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