The Strathern Annual Lecture was established in 2011 to celebrate the many-facetted achievements of Dame Marilyn Strathern FBA, who was William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology from 1993 to 2008, and Mistress of Girton College (1998-2009), and whose writings have been profoundly and widely influential in anthropology and on cognate disciplines. Her many awards and distinctions include the Huxley Memorial Medal, bestowed by the Royal Anthropological Institute for lifetime achievement at the highest level. Marilyn Strathern has also given many years of devoted service to the Cambridge Social Anthropology Department, and this lecture is a mark of the affection as well as the esteem in which she is held in the Department.
The Strathern Lecture is organised annually by the student-led Cambridge University Social Anthropology Society (CUSAS), which is supported by the Department.
Upcoming:
14th Annual Dame Marilyn Strathern Lecture (16th May):
Professor Jason Hickel (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
Capital, imperialism, and the struggle for development in the 21st century
2023 (18 May) Professor Alpa Shah (LSE), When Decolonisation is Hijacked
2022 (12 May) Professor Ruben Andersson (University of Oxford), Security and Subversion in a Time of Monsters
2021 (13 May) Professor Dan Hicks (University of Oxford), A Dead White Man
2020 (27 May) Professor Kath Weston (University of Virginia and University of Edinburgh), Bequeathing A World
2019 (9 May) Professor Penny Harvey (University of Manchester), The Awkward Relations of Infrastructural Politics
2018 (24 May) Professor Don Kulick (Uppsala University), Violence, Talk and Nonsense: Gang Rape in a Papua New Guinean Village
2017 (9 May) Tim Ingold (Aberdeen University), The Future of Anthropology and the Future of the University
2016 (26 May) Yunxiang Yan (University of California, Los Angeles), The relational person and moralized hierarchy in Chinese culture
2015 (21 May) Anna Tsing (University of California, Santa Cruz), Earth Stalked by Man
2014 (30 May) Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (National Museum of the Federal University, Rio De Janeiro), Who’s Afraid of the Ontological Wolf?
2013 (23 May) Nikolas Rose (King’s College, London), A Vital Turn? Biological Life and the Human Sciences
2012 (16 May) David Graeber (Goldsmiths, University of London), Culture as Creative Refusal: Heroic and Anti-Heroic Politics
2011 (12 May) Marlyn Strathern (University of Cambridge), Gifts Money Cannot Buy
Previous Events:
2023 Strathern Lecture (18 May) Professor Alpa Shah (LSE), When Decolonisation is Hijacked
2022: Security and Subversion in a Time of Monsters (Ruben Andersson)
2014: Who is Afraid of the Ontological Wolf? (Eduardo Viveiros De Castro)
2013: A Vital Turn?: Biological Life and the Human Science (Nikolas Rose)
2012: Culture as Creative Refusal (David Graeber)
2011: Gifts Money Cannot Buy (Marilyn Strathern)
