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Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
Founded	1871; 153 years ago
Type	Charitable organisation
Registration no.	England and Wales: 246269
Location	London, W1;
Coordinates	51°31′26″N 0°08′23″W / 51.523786°N 0.139802°W
President	The Baroness Black of Strome
Website	www.therai.org.uk

The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (RAI) is a long-established anthropological organisation, and Learned Society, with a global membership. Its remit includes all the component fields of anthropology, such as biological anthropology, evolutionary anthropology, social anthropology, cultural anthropology, visual anthropology and medical anthropology, as well as sub-specialisms within these, and interests shared with neighbouring disciplines such as human genetics, archaeology and linguistics. It seeks to combine a tradition of scholarship with services to anthropologists, including students.

The RAI promotes the public understanding of anthropology, as well as the contribution anthropology can make to public affairs and social issues. It includes within its constituency not only academic anthropologists, but also those with a general interest in the subject, and those trained in anthropology who work in other fields.

History

The institute's fellows are lineal successors to the founding fellows of the Ethnological Society of London, who in February 1843 formed a breakaway group of the Aborigines' Protection Society, which had been founded in 1837. The new society was to be 'a centre and depository for the collection and systematisation of all observations made on human races'.

Between 1863 and 1870 there were two organisations, the Ethnological Society and the Anthropological Society. The Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (1871) was the result of a merger between these two rival bodies. Permission to add the word Royal was granted in 1907. In 2020 the institute was awarded a Charter by the Privy Council.

Publications

The Institute publishes three journals:

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, formerly Man, is a quarterly journal with articles on all aspects of anthropology, as well as correspondence and a section of book reviews. The Journal provides an important forum for 'anthropology as a whole', embracing social anthropology, archaeology, biological anthropology and the study of material culture. A Special (fifth) issue was inaugurated in 2006. The Special Issue appears annually, is guest-edited or single-authored, and addresses different themes in anthropology from year to year.

Anthropology Today is a bimonthly publication aiming to provide a forum for the application of anthropological analysis to public and topical issues, while reflecting the breadth of interests within the discipline of anthropology. It is committed to promoting debate at the interface between anthropology and areas of applied knowledge such as education, medicine and development; as well as that between anthropology and other academic disciplines.

Anthropological Index Online was launched in 1997. The Index is an online bibliographic service for researchers, teachers and students of anthropology worldwide. Access is free to individual users; institutional users (except those in developing countries) pay an annual subscription. Major European and other languages of scholarship are covered, and new material is added on a continuing basis.

The Indian Antiquary was published under the authority of the Council of the Royal Anthropological Institute from 1925 to 1932.

RAI Collection

The RAI has a unique reference and research collection comprising photos, films, archives and manuscripts.

The photographic library consists of over 75,000 historic prints, negatives, lantern-slides and other images, the earliest dating from the 1860s. The photo library illustrates the great diversity and vitality of the world's cultures as well as the history of photographic image-making itself.

The RAI is actively involved in developing ethnographic film and video, as a mode of anthropological enquiry and as an educational resource. It has an extensive collection of videos, copies of which are available for sale for educational and academic purposes. Films can be studied and previewed onsite.

The archive and manuscript collection spans a period of over 150 years, providing a unique historical record of the discipline and of the Institute itself. Much unpublished textual and visual material entrusted to the RAI over the years is held in the manuscript collection, which is being conserved and catalogued on a continuing basis.

Access to the RAI Collection is free to all RAI Fellows, Members, Student Associates and all undergraduate students by prior appointment. Others may visit the Collection on payment of an access fee.

The RAI has a close association with the British Museum's Anthropology Library, which incorporates the former RAI Library given to the Museum in 1976. The Library is located within the Centre for Anthropology at the British Museum, and is effectively Britain's national anthropological library. All may use the Library on site; RAI Fellows may borrow books acquired by the RAI.

Awards

Huxley Memorial Medal

The Huxley Memorial Medal and Lecture was established in 1900 in memory of Thomas Henry Huxley to identify and acknowledge the work of scientists, British or foreign, distinguished in any field of anthropological research. The highest honour awarded by the Royal Anthropological Institute, it is awarded annually by ballot of the council. The recipient delivers a lecture that is usually published.^[1]^[2]

Rivers Memorial Medal

The Medal was founded in 1923 by the Council of the Institute in memory of its late President, William Halse Rivers, originally for 'anthropological work in the field'. However, in the 1960s the rules were amended to reflect anthropological work in a broader sense. The Medal shall be awarded for a recent body of work published over a period of five years which makes, as a whole, a significant contribution to social, physical or cultural anthropology or archaeology. Recipients^[3] include:

1924 A. C. Haddon
1925 C. G. Seligman
1926 Edward Westermarck
1927 Sir W. Baldwin Spencer
1928 Sidney H. Ray and Emil Torday
1929 John Henry Hutton
1930 Bronislaw Malinowski
1931 Reverend E. W. Smith
1932 Melville Williams Hilton
1933 Brenda Seligman
1934 Gertrude Caton-Thompson
1935 A. M. Hocart
1936 Peter H. Buck
1937 Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard
1938 Dorothy Ann Elizabeth Garrod
1939 Isaac Schapera
1940 Raymond Firth
1941 Diamon Jenness
1942 James Philip Mills
1943 Beatrice Mary Blackwood
1944 James Hornell
1945 J. Eric Thompson and Audrey I. Richards
1946 Ian H. Hogbin
1947 Meyer Fortes
1948 Verrier Elwin
1949 C. von Fürer Haimendorf
1950 S. F. Nadel
1951 R. F. Fortune
1952 L. S. B. Leakey and Monica Wilson
1953 Donald F. Thomson
1954 Max Gluckman
1955 M. N. Srinivas
1956 Daryll Forde
1957 Phyllis M. Kaberry
1958 E. R. Leach
1959 J. A. Barnes
1960 J. C. Mitchell
1961 Hilda Kuper
1962 H. Lehman
1963 Derek Stenning
1964 Adrian Mayer
1965 Victor Turner
1966 Philip Gulliver
1967 Philip Mayer and Nigel A. Barnicot
1968 Mary Douglas and Eric Higgs
1969 Joseph Sidney Weiner
1970 Rodney Needham
1972 John d'A. Waechter
1973 S. J. Tambiah
1974 David Francis Pocock
1975 J. R. Goody
1976 Andrew Strathern and Marilyn Strathern
1977 Peter Ucko
1978 Phillip Tobias
1979 Colin Renfrew
1980 Abner Cohen
1982 Elizabeth Colson
1983 Maurice Bloch
1984 Alan Macfarlane
1985 David Parkin
1986 John Blacking
1988 Alfred Gell
1989 Tim Ingold
1990 C. G. Nicholas Mascie-Taylor
1991 Dan Sperber
1992 Ladislav Holy
1993 R. W. Wrangham
1994 Michael Herzfeld
1995 Simon Harrison
1996 Ray Abrahams
1997 James Carrier
1998 Nicholas Thomas
1999 Caroline Humphrey
2000 Adam Kuper
2002 Maurice Bloch
2003 Robert Hugh Layton
2004 Chris Stringer
2005 Clive Gamble
2006 Paul Sillitoe
2007 Andrew Whiten
2008 Daniel Miller and Brian Morris
2009 Wendy James
2010 Stephen Shennan
2011 Robert Foley
2012 Nigel Rapport
2013 Phyllis Lee
2014 Trevor Marchand
2015 Chris Hann
2016 Ruth Finnegan
2017 Dan Hicks
2018 Madeleine Reeves
2019 María Martínon-Torres
2020 Judith Okley

RAI events

From time to time, the RAI runs lectures, workshops and other special events on topical issues. Its International Festivals of Ethnographic Film, run every two years in partnership with UK universities and other hosts, are a recognised part of the international ethnographic film calendar. Competitions for the Film Prizes attract entries from film-makers throughout the world.^[4]

Fellowship

Individuals seeking full Fellowship status are usually required to be proposed by current Fellows who personally know the potential member. Fellowship in the institute is primarily for persons who have professional or academic achievement in the field of the study of humankind or the social sciences. Fellows are elected by the RAI Council, and are entitled to use the honorific post-nominal letters FRAI.

The RAI has approximately 1800 Fellows and Members