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The Lady Rees of Ludlow

Born
Caroline Waddington

(1943-09-01) 1 September 1943 (age 81)
Nationality British
Education St George's School, Edinburgh
Alma mater Girton College, Cambridge
University of Leeds
Title Sigrid Rausing Professor of Collaborative Anthropology
Spouse(s)
Nicholas Humphrey
(m. 1967⁠–⁠1977)
(m. 1986)
Parent(s) C. H. Waddington
Margaret Justin Blanco White
Scientific career
Institutions University of Cambridge
Girton College, Cambridge
Scott Polar Research Institute
King's College, Cambridge

Caroline Humphrey, also known as Baroness Rees of Ludlow, was born on September 1, 1943. She is a British anthropologist and a university professor. An anthropologist is someone who studies human societies and cultures.

About Caroline Humphrey

Early Life and Family

Caroline Humphrey's father was Conrad H. Waddington, a biologist. Her mother was Margaret Justin Blanco White, an architect. Caroline has a younger sister, Dusa McDuff, who is a mathematician. She also has an older half-brother, C. Jake Waddington, who is a physicist.

Education and Achievements

Caroline Humphrey studied Social Anthropology at Girton College, Cambridge. She earned her PhD in 1973. Her research for her PhD was about "Magical Drawings in the Religion of the Buryat."

She has received several important awards for her work. In 1999, she was given the Rivers Memorial Medal. In 2003, she received an honorary doctorate from the National University of Mongolia. The University of Bolton also gave her an honorary doctorate in 2017. This was to recognize her amazing contributions to anthropology.

Personal Life

In 1967, Caroline Waddington married Nicholas Humphrey. They later divorced in 1977. In 1986, she married Martin Rees.

Caroline Humphrey's Research and Career

Where She Studied Cultures

Caroline Humphrey has traveled to many places to study different cultures. Her research has taken her to Siberia, Nepal, India, Mongolia, China (Inner Mongolia), Uzbekistan, and Ukraine.

In 1966, she was one of the first anthropologists from a Western country allowed to do fieldwork in the USSR. Her early research focused on the religious art of the Buryat people. Later, she studied Soviet collective farms and farming in India and Tibet. She also looked into Jainist culture in India and worked on protecting the environment and cultures in Inner Asia.

Her Roles at Cambridge University

From 1971 to 1978, Caroline Humphrey was a fellow at Girton College, Cambridge. She also worked at the Scott Polar Research Institute. She taught at the University of Cambridge in the Department of Social Anthropology from 1978 to 1983.

She then became a director of studies in archaeology and anthropology at Cambridge. She held this role from 1984-89 and again from 1992-96. She was a university reader in Asian anthropology from 1995–98 and a university professor of Asian anthropology from 1998–2006. She was also a visiting professor at the University of Michigan in 2000. From 2006 to 2010, she was the Rausing Professor of Collaborative Anthropology.

Founding the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit

In 1986, she helped start the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit (MIASU) at Cambridge. She co-founded it with Urgunge Onon. After retiring from her professorship in 2010, she became the Voluntary Research Director of MIASU.

She has been a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge since 1978. In 2010, she finished writing a book with Hurelbaatar Ujeed called A Monastery in Time: the Making of Mongolian Buddhism. This book came from her fieldwork and visits to Mergen Monastery in Inner Mongolia, China, which started in 1995. This monastery has kept a special form of Mongolian-language Buddhism alive since the 1700s.

Awards and Recognition

In 2011, Caroline Humphrey was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE). This honor was given to her for her important contributions to scholarship. She is also an honorary fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge. In 2004, she was chosen to be a member of the American Philosophical Society.

Her Published Works

  • Karl Marx Collective: Economy, Society and Religion in a Siberian Collective Farm (1983)
  • (ed. with Michael Carrithers) The Assembly of Listeners: Jains in Society (1991)
  • (ed. with Stephen Hugh-Jones) Barter, Exchange and Value (1992)
  • (ed. with Nicholas Thomas) Shamanism, History and the State (1994)
  • (with James Laidlaw) The Archetypal Actions of Ritual, illustrated by the Jain rite of worship (1994)
  • (with Urgunge Onon) Shamans and Elders: Experience, Knowledge and Power among the Daur Mongols (1996)
  • (ed. with David Sneath) Culture and Environment in Inner Asia (1996)
  • (with Piers Vitebsky) Sacred Architecture (1997)
  • Marx Went Away, but Karl Stayed Behind (1998)
  • (with David Sneath) The End of Nomadism? Society, the State and the Environment in Inner Asia (1999)
  • (ed. with A. Tulokhonov) Kul'tura i Priroda vo Vnutrenneyi Azii (Culture and Environment in Inner Asia, in Russian) (2001)
  • (ed. with David Sneath) Dotugadu Aziiya-yin Soyol kiged Baigal Orchim (Environment and Culture of Inner Asia, in Mongolian) (2002)
  • The Unmaking of Soviet Life: Everyday Economies After Socialism (2002)
  • (ed. with Katherine Verdery) Property in Question: Value Transformation in the Global Economy (2004)
  • (ed. with Catherine Alexander and Victor Buchli) Urban Life in Post-Soviet Central Asia (2007)
  • (with Hurelbaatar Ujeed) A Monastery in Time: The Making of Mongolian Buddhism (2013)
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