Huxley Memorial Medal and Lecture Prior Recipients

2025	Professor Didier Fassin
2024	Professor Alex de Waal	‘Anthropology and the Humanitarian Encounter: Famine, Societal Trauma and the Academy’
2023	Professor Chirs Stringer	‘Mostly Out of Africa: how, when and where’
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’

Huxley Memorial Medal and Lecture Prior Recipients

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