Patrick Vinton Kirch

Professor Patrick Vinton Kirch is the Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus and Professor of the Graduate School at University of California, Berkeley after serving as the Class of 1954 Professor of Anthropology and Integrative Biology for 25 years. After studying anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University, he became an anthropologist at the Bernice P. Bishop Museum. He then went on to teach at the University of Washington while dually serving as the Director of the Burke Museum in Seattle. When changed locations to the University of California Berkeley to teach anthropology, he worked, and has continued to work as a curator for the Hearst Museum of Anthropology, where he also served as Director for a few years. He has studied the archaeology, ethnography, and paleoecology of the Pacific Islands and carried out original field research throughout Oceania, including work in Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, the Loyalty Islands, Kingdom of Tonga, American Samoa, Yap, Belau, the Marshall Islands, the Cook Islands, French Polynesia (Mangareva, Mo'orea), and Hawai'i. He has received awards for his work such as the John J. Carty Award, J.I. Staley Prize, H.E. Gregory Medal, and is a member of the American Philosophical Society and National Academy of Sciences.