Marilyn Strathern

Marilyn Strathern DBE, Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology, Cambridge, and former Mistress of Girton College, is (honorary) Life President of the Association of Social Anthropologists.  Her interests have been divided between Melanesian and British ethnography.  She is probably most well known for The gender of the gift (1988), a critique of anthropological theories of society and gender relations applied to Melanesia, which she pairs with After nature (1992), a comment on the cultural revolution at home.  Her most experimental work is an exercise on the comparative method (Partial connections 1991).  The debates around legislation on human embryology and fertilisation stimulated an interest in reproductive technologies, leading to collaborative research that examined some of the issues in the context of kinship.  Projects over the last twenty five years are reflected in publications on reproductive technologies, and intellectual and cultural property rights, while ‘critique of good practice’ has been the umbrella under which she has written about audit, accountability and interdisciplinarity.  Strathern is currently working on issues in the conceptualisation of relations, some of which were sketched out in her 2005 book, Kinship, law and the unexpected: relatives are often a surprise.