Awards

Huxley Memorial Medal and Lecture Prior Recipients

2024 Professor Alex de Waal    
2023 Professor Chirs Stringer    
2022 Professor Marcia Langton (no lecture)  
2021 Professor Stephen Shennan 'Population and the dynamics of culture change'  
2020 Professor Stephen Levinson 'The ‘interaction engine’: the evolution of the infrastructure for language'  
 
2019 Professor Chris Hann ‘Economy and Ethics in the Cosmic Process’  
2018 Professor Anna Tsing ‘The More-than-Human Anthropocene’  
2017 Professor Margaret Conkey 'Field Walking, Walking the Field: Anthropological Archaeology as Viewed from Deep Time'  
2016 Professor Margaret Lock 'Moveable Environments and the Permeable Human Body'  
2015 Professor Robin Dunbar 'Dunbar’s Number: How Constrained Is Your Social World?'  
2014 Professor Tim Ingold 'On Human Correspondence'  
2013 Professor Howard Morphy 'Extended Lives in Global Spaces: The Anthropology of Yolngu Pre Burial Ceremonies'  
2012 Professor Alan MacFarlane 'Anthropology, Empire and Modernity'  
2011 Professor Bruce Kapferer 'How Anthropologists Think: Refiguring the Exotic'  
2010 Professor Johannes Fabian 'Cultural Anthropology and the Question of Knowledge'  
 
2009 Professor Ian Hodder 'Human - Thing Entanglement: Towards an Integrated Archaeological Perspective'  
2008 Professor Maurice Godelier 'Community, Society, Culture: Three Keys to Understanding Today's Conflicted Identities'  
2007 Professor Adam Kuper 'Changing the Subject'  
2006 Professor Leslie Aiello 'Diet, Energy and Human Evolution'  
2005 Professor Peter Ucko '"Forms Such as Never Were in Nature": Forging Authenticity'  
2004 Professor Dame Marilyn Strathern 'A Community of Critics?'  
2003 Professor Emeritus Gannanath Obeyesekere 'Cannibal Talk: Dialogical Misunderstandings in the South Seas'  
2002 Dr Jane Goodall, CBE 'The Scientific Study of Primates and its Impact on Contemporary World-Views'  
2001 Professor John Middleton 'Merchants'  
2000 Professor Pierre Bourdieu 'Participant Objectivation: Breaching the Boundary Between Anthropology and Sociology - How?'  
 
1999 Professor Sally Falk Moore 'Certanties Undone: Fifty Turbulent Years of Legal Anthropology, 1949-1999'  
1998 Professor Marshall Sahlins 'Two or Three Things that I know about Culture'  
1997 Professor Stanley Tambiah 'Transnational Movements, Multiculturalism and Ethnonationalism'  
1996 Professor Philip Tobias 'The Ape-like Australopithecus after 70 Years: Was it Hominid?'  
1995 Professor Jack Goody 'A Kernel of Doubt: Agnosticism in Cultural and Cross-Cultural Perspective'  
1994 Professor Sidney W. Mintz 'Enduring Substances and Trying Theories: the Caribbean Region as Oikumenê'  
1993 Professor George Stocking 'Reading the Palimpsest of Enquiry: "Notes and Queries" and the History of Social Anthropology  
1992 Professor Mary Douglas 'The Talking Donkey: Balam's Story in The Book of Numbers (Chapters 22-24)'  
1991 Professor Colin Renfrew 'Archaeology, Genetics and Linguistic Diversity: a New Synthesis?'  
1990 Professor Robert Hinde 'A Biologist looks at Anthropology'  
 
1989 Professor Fredrik Barth 'Transmission, and the Shaping of Culture in Asia and Melanesia'  
1988 Dr. Carleton Gajdusek 'New Plagues - Old Scourges: Epidemics of Brain Disease in Population Isolates in the Twentieth Century'  
1987 Professor G. Ainsworth Harrison 'Social Heterogeneity and Biological Variation'  
1986 Professor Lewis Binford 'Date, Relativism and Archaeological Science: Looking at, Thinking about and Inferring the Past'  
1985 Professor Louis Dumont 'Are Cultures Living Beings? German Identity in Interaction'  
1984 Professor Junichiro Itani 'The Evolution of Primate Social Structure'  
1983 Professor Clifford Geertz 'Culture and Change: The Indonesian Case'  
1982 Professor Paul T. Baker 'Adaptive Limits of Human Populations'  
1981 Professor Fei Hsiao-Tung 'Some Observations on the Transformation of Rural China'  
1980 Professor Sir Edmund Leach 'Why did Moses have a Sister'  
 
1979 Professor Gordon Willey 'Towards a Holistic View of Ancient Maya Civilizations'  
1978 Professor J.S. Weiner 'Beyond Physical Anthropology  
1977 Professor M. Fortes 'Sacrifice, or was your Fieldwork really Necessary'  
1976 Professor M.N. Srinivas 'The Changing Position of Indian Women'  
1975 Professor G. Reichel-Dolmatoff 'Cosmology as Ecological Analysis: a View from the Rain-Forest'  
1974 Professor J.D. Clark 'Africa in Prehistory: Peripheral or Paramount?'  
1973 Professor K. Wachsmann 'Spencer to Hood: a Changing View of Non-European Music'  
1972 Professor L.L. Cavalli-Sforza 'Human Races: Their Origin and Differentiation'  
1971 Professor G.P. Murdock 'Anthropology's Mythology'  
1970 Professor C.D. Forde 'Ecology and the Social Structure'  
 
1969 Professor I. Schapera 'The Crime of Sorcery'  
1968 G.H. Rivière 'My experience at the Musée d'Ethnologie'  
1967 S.L. Washburn 'Behaviour and the Origin of Man'  
1966 J.E.S. Thompson 'The Maya Central Area'  
1965 Professor C. Lévi-Strauss `The Future of Kinship Studies'  
1964 Professor G.H.R. Von Koenigswald `The Early Man'  
1963 Professor E.E. Evans-Pritchard `The Zande State'  
1962 D.A.E. Garrod `The Middle Palaeolithic of the Near East'  
1961 Dr. A.E. Mourant `Evolution, Genetics and Anthropology'  
1960 Dr. S. Lothrop `Early Migrations to Central and South America'  
 
1959 Professor R. Firth `Problems and Assumptions in an Anthropological Study of Religion'  
1958 Professor Sir Wilfrid Le Gros Clark `Bones of Contention'  
1957 Professor J.E.S. Linne `Technical Secrets of American Indians'  
1956 Professor J.B.S. Haldane `The Argument from Animals to Men: an Examination of its validity for Anthropologists'  
1955 Professor Robert Redfield `Societies and Cultures as Natural Systems'; Professor F. Wood-Jones (no lecture due to death)  
1954 Professor Henri V. Vallois `Neanderthals and Praesapiens'; Professor Ralph Linton (no lecture due to death)  
1953 Professor M. Ginsberg `On the Diversity of Morals'  
1952 Professor Kaj Hirkett-Smith `The History of Ethnology in Denmark'; Sir Peter Buck `The Rangi Niroa' (no lecture due to death)  
1951 Professor A.R. Radcliffe-Brown `The Comparative Method in Social Anthropology'  
1950 Dr. Julian S. Huxley `New Bottles for New Wine: Ideology and Scientific Knowledge'  
 
1949 James Hornell (no lecture due to death)  
1948 Professor Robert H. Lowie `Some Aspects of Political Organization among American Aborigines'  
1947 Dr. W.L.H. Duckworth `Some Complexities of Human Structure'  
1946 Miss G. Caton-Thompson `The Aterian Industry: its Place and Significance in the Palaeolithic World'  
1945 Professor A.L. Kroeber `The Ancient Oikumene as an historic Culture Aggregate'  
1944 Professor V. Gordon Childe `Archaeological Ages as Technological Stages'  
1943 Professor F.C. Bartlett `Anthropology in Reconstruction'  
1942 Sir Leonard \Woolley `North Syria as a Cultural Link in the Ancient World'  
1941 Professor Henri Breuil `The Discovery of the Antiquity of Man' (Lecture postponed due to World War II)  
1940 H.J.E. Peake `The Study of Prehistoric Times'  
 
1939 Dr. R.R. Marett `Charity and the Struggle for Existence'  
1938 Professor Marcel Mauss `Une Categorie de l'Esprit Humain: la Notion de Personnne, celle de "Moi"'  
1937 Professor H.J. Fleure `Racial Evolution and Archaeology'  
1936 Professor Edward Westermarck `Methods in Social Anthropology'  
1935 Sir Grafton Elliott Smith `The Place of Thomas Henry Huxley in Anthropology'  
1934 Sir Aurel Stein `The Indo-European Borderlands: their Prehistory in the light of Geography and of recent Explorations'  
1933 Professor J.L. Myers `The Cretian Labyrinth: a Retrospect for Aegen Research'  
1932 Professor C.G. Seligman `Anthropological Perspective and Psychological Theory'  
1931 Dr. Georg. Thilenius `On some Biological Viewpoints in Ethnology'  
1930 Professor A.H. Sayce `The Antiquity of Civilized Man'  
 
1929 Erlan Nordenskiold `The American Indian as an Inventor'  
1928 Sir Arthur Keith `The Evolution of the Human Race'  
1927 Dr. Ales Hrdlicka `The Neanderthal Phase of Man'  
1926 Sir William Ridgeway (posthumously)  
1925 Sir Arthus Evans `The Early Nilogic, Libyan and Egyptian Relations with Minoan Crete'  
1924 Professor R. Verneau `La Race de Neanderthal et la Race de Grimaldi; leur Rôle dans l'Humanité'  
1923 Dr. E.S. Hartland (no lecture due to ill-health)  
1922 Professor Marcelin Boule `l'Oeuvre Anthropologie du Prince Albert Ier de Monaco et les recents Progres de la Paleontologie humaine en France'  
1921 Henry Balfour `The Archer's Bow in the Homeric Poems'  
1920 A.C. Haddon `Migrations of Culture in British New Guinea'  
 
1919   None  
1918   None  
1917   None  
1916 Sir James G. Frazer `Ancient Stories of a Great Flood'  
1915 M. Emile Catailhac (no lecture due to World War I)  
1914   None  
1913 Professor W. J. Sollas `Paviland Cave: an Aurignacian Station in Wales'  
1912 William Gowland `The Metals in Antiquity'  
1911 Felix von Luschan `The Early Inhabitants of Western Asia'  
1910 W. Boyd Dawkins `The Arrival of Man in Britain in the Pleistocene Age'  
 
1909 Professor Gustaf Retzius `The so-called North European Races of Mankind'  
1908 William Z. Ripley `The European Population of the United States'  
1907 Edward Barnett Tylor (no lecture)  
1906 Professor W.M. Flinders Petrie `Migrations'  
1905 John Beddoe `Colour and Race'  
1904 Dr. J. Deniker `Les six Races composant la Pouplation Actuelle de l'Europe'  
1903 Karl Pearson `On the Inheritance of the Mental and Moral Character'  
1902 Dr. D.J. Cunningham `Right-handedness and Lef-brainedness'  
1901 Sir Francis Galton `The Possible Movement of the Human Breed under the existing Conditions of Law and Sentiment'  
1900 Lord Avebury `Huxley, The Man and his Work'