| 1 | Name: | Dr. Caroline Humphrey | |
| Institution: | University of Cambridge | ||
| Year Elected: | 2004 | ||
| Class: | 4. Humanities | ||
| Subdivision: | 407. Philosophy | ||
| Residency: | International | ||
| Living? : | Living | ||
| Birth Date: | 1943 | ||
Caroline Humphrey is, clear and away, the foremost Western social anthropologist working on the Soviet Union/Russia, said no less an authority than fellow APS member Clifford Geertz, who reviewed Humphrey's classic work on the social and cultural complexities of a Siberian collective for the New Republic. Her wide-ranging scholarship of Asian populations and Mongol shamanism have further consolidated her position as the pre-eminent social anthropologist in her field. She is particularly known for her work on nomadic life in East Asia, its decline and the changing status of women in those societies; Russia's new criminal class; as well as her long interest in the Jain society, an ancient, ritualistic, non-Brahminical East Indian sect. Dr. Humphrey's fluency in Russian and Mongolian and her understanding of Tibetan, Hindi and Napali have further assisted her penetrating studies. Equally remarkable are her communication skills among scholars and the public, whether by lectures or through widely-acclaimed documentary films. Dr. Humphrey is a Fellow of King's College and has served as Sigrid Rausing Professor of Collaborative Anthropology at Cambridge since 2006. She has won the Staley Prize in Anthropology (1990), the Royal Anthropological Institute's Rivers Memorial Medal (1999) and the Heldt Prize (2002) and is the author of Karl Marx Collective: Economy, Society and Religion in Siberian Collective Farm (1983); Shamans and Elders: Experience, Knowledge and Power among the Daur Mongols (1996); and (with D. Sneath) The End of Nomadism? Society, State and the Environment in Inner Asia (1999). | |||