RAI Award and Medal winners for 2024

Home About RAI Announcements RAI Award and Medal winners for 2024

The HUXLEY MEDAL is awarded to Professor Didier Fassin for his outstanding contribution and conceptual leadership in Medical Anthropology, including global inequalities in health in the context of HIV and AIDS politics, the Anthropology of the State (police, justice and prisons), Humanitarian and Critical Moral Anthropology.

The RIVERS MEDAL is conferred upon Professor Marta Mirazón Lahr for her major work on the evolution, dispersal and diversity of modern humans incorporating human palaeontology, evolutionary genetics, and archaeology.

Professor David Mosse is awarded the LUCY MAIR MEDAL for his life-time commitment to anthropology and mental health, which has recently been further recognised through the award of £8,000,000 for a centre of medical anthropology and health at SOAS.

The PUBLIC ANTHROPOLOGY award goes to Professor Lorna Williams, who has devoted her career to explaining the trauma that forced-boarding schools can cause to indigenous peoples, and to exploring ways that curricula can be rewritten to take into account the indigenous voice.

The CURL LECTURESHIP is given to Dr Isabelle Winder an evolutionary anthropologist based in the University of Bangor with interests in primatology, functional morphology, evolutionary biology, biogeography, ecology, palaeontology and human origins.

The MARSH PRIZE, which goes to a person who is not an academic but who has used anthropological ideas to make a contribution to public life has reached its tenth year. In order to mark this, the Marsh Trust has offered exceptionally offered two prizes this year. The first goes to David Cleary who has made an enormous impact as Director of Agriculture for the Nature Conservancy. The second goes to Dr Will Norman who has applied his anthropological training to address key contemporary challenges around sustainability and health, particularly with regards to transport and physical activity in everyday lives.

The LIFE-TIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD is given to Professor Ian Hodder, arguably the most influential archaeological theorist in the world today, who has trained generations of archaeologists and anthropologists in Britain, the US, and more recently Turkey.

HONORARY FELLOWSHIPs are conferred upon

Niede Guidon (Brazil), Niede Guidon is a distinguished Brazilian archaeologist and anthropologist known for her work in prehistoric archaeology of South America, especially early occupation and rock art, and for her efforts to secure the conservation of the World Heritage Site Serra da Capivara National Park.

Paul Nkwi (Cameroon) Professor of Anthropology at the Catholic University of Cameroon (CATUC) in Bamenda, Cameroon. Professor Nkwi was the founding president of the Pan African Anthropological Association 1989-1994. In 1973, he won the Frobenius Esasay Award to celebration the Centenary of Leo Frobenius. He has been Vice president of the African Academy of Sciences, and founding Executive Secretary of the Cameroon Academy of Sciences.