New Director for the RAI. Following a wide-ranging search and selection process we are delighted to announce the appointment of Dr David Shankland, currently Reader in Social Anthropology at the University of Bristol, as the incoming Director of the RAI. He succeeds Hilary Callan, who has held the post since September 2000. David Shankland has worked with the RAI for many years in a voluntary capacity, and is well known to Fellows as the Institute's current Honorary Treasurer. He will take up the appointment formally on 1 October 2010.
Annual General Meeting 2010. The AGM will be held on Thursday 23 September, at 4.00 pm in the Stevenson Lecture Theatre, British Museum, London WC1. All are welcome; only RAI Fellows may vote. We hope that as many Fellows as possible will attend the AGM and participate in the affairs of the Institute. For the detailed AGM agenda and programme, please see the insert included with this issue of AT and posted on the RAI website.
The AGM will be followed at approximately 5.45 pm by the 2010 Henry Myers Lecture, to be given by Professor Sir Geoffrey Lloyd FBA of Cambridge University. Professor Lloyd's title is 'Humanity between gods and beasts? Ontologies in question'. An abstract is posted on the RAI website. The lecture will be followed by a reception for all present.
The Annual Report for 2009 has been published and is being sent to all Fellows with this issue of AT.
The Huxley Memorial Lecturer and Medallist for 2010 is Professor Johannes Fabian of the University of Amsterdam. The lecture will take place on Thursday 25 November in the Stevenson Lecture Theatre, British Museum (time tba). Professor Fabian's title is 'Cultural anthropology and the question of knowledge'.
The 12th RAI International Festival of Ethnographic Film will be held at University College London on 24-26 June 2011.
We are delighted to announce that the Curl Essay Prize for 2009 has been awarded to Philip Swift for his essay 'Touching conversion: tangible transformations in a Japanese new religion', and that the J.B. Donne Essay Prize for 2009 has been awarded to Sohini Ray for her essay 'The language of hand gestures in Manipuri dance: Semantics and politics'.
Applications for the next Fellowship in Urgent Anthropology, and offers from HEIs to host the next round of Leach-RAI Fellowships, are now invited; see separate announcements in this issue of AT.
Readers are reminded that the deadline for proposals for the Special Issue of the JRAI to be published in 2013 is 1 November 2010; see separate notice in this issue of AT.
Summer closure. The RAI offices will be closed from Monday 23 to Monday 30 August inclusive.
In Autumn 2010 the union catalogue of all the departmental libraries of the British Museum will be accessible online. Fellows will be able to check online whether a book is held, if it is already on loan (and if so when it is due back), where it is held, and to request it in advance. RAI Fellows will not have borrowing rights from the Museum's other libraries, but material held in them can be brought for consultation to the Centre for Anthropology.
