Royal Anthropological Institute

New Director for the RAI. Following a wide-ranging search and selection process we are delighted to announce the appointment of Dr David Shankland, currently Reader in Social Anthropology at the University of Bristol, as the incoming Director of the RAI. He succeeds Hilary Callan, who has held the post since September 2000. David Shankland has worked with the RAI for many years in a voluntary capacity, and is well known to Fellows as the Institute's current Honorary Treasurer. He will take up the appointment formally on 1 October 2010.

The 2010 Annual General Meeting will be held on Thursday 23 September in the Stevenson Lecture Theatre, British Museum. It will be followed by the 2010 Henry Myers Lecture to be given by Professor Geoffrey Lloyd of Cambridge University. Professor Lloyd’s title is ‘Humanity between gods and beasts? Ontologies in question’. The full programme for the event will be advertised in the August issue of AT.

Professor Roy Ellen FBA, President of the RAI, will have delivered his second Presidential Address when this issue of AT appears. Professor Ellen’s title is ‘On the concept of cultural transmission’, and his address will be given on 16 April at Queens University, Belfast, during the Annual Conference of the Association of Social Anthropologists. We thank the ASA and the University for their hospitality.

Professor Roy Ellen FB, President of the RAI, will deliver his second Presidential Address on Friday 16 April 2010, during the Annual Conference of the Association of Social Anthropologists at Queens University, Belfast. Professor Ellen’s provisional title is ‘On the concept of cultural transmission’. We thank the ASA and University for their hospitality.

Anthropology at A-level. We are delighted to announce that the new GCE A-level in anthropology has finally been accredited by the national regulator, Ofqual. From September 2010, schools will be able to offer anthropology at AS and A2 levels. For the first time, apart from an optional social anthropology course within the International Baccalaureate, anthropology will be available as an examination subject at pre-university level in the UK. The RAI’s Education Committee has worked since 2004 on designing the content of the A-level; and since 2008 has collaborated with the awarding body AQA to develop the course for accreditation. The course will be offered and assessed by AQA, and the RAI will continue working with AQA to develop teaching and learning resources. A dedicated RAI education website, DiscoverAnthropology, will be launched shortly with financial support from the Economic and Social Research Council. The edited text of a joint press announcement is published in this issue of AT.

The 2009 Annual General Meeting will have taken place by the time this issue of AT goes to press. The Rivers Memorial Medal for 2009 has been awarded to Professor Wendy James FBA. A double award of the Lucy Mair Medal for 2009 has been made to Professor Tom Selwyn and Dr John Palmer.

Annual General Meeting 2009. The AGM will be held on Thursday 17 September at 4.30 pm in the Stevenson Lecture Theatre, Clore Education Centre, British Museum, London WC1. All are welcome; only RAI Fellows may vote. We hope that as many Fellows as possible will attend the AGM and participate in the affairs of the Institute. For the detailed AGM agenda and programme, please see the insert included with this issue of AT and posted on the RAI website.

The President of the RAI, Professor Roy Ellen FBA, delivered his Presidential Address on 9 April in Bristol, during the Annual Conference of the Association of Social Anthropologists. Professor Ellen’s title was ‘Theories in anthropology and anthropological theories’. We are grateful to the ASA and the University of Bristol for hosting this event.

The 2009 AGM will be held during the second half of September, on a date to be announced. It will be followed by the 2009 Curl Lecture, to be given by Dr Joost Fontein of Edinburgh University. Dr Fontein’s provisional title is ‘Graves, ruins and belonging in southern Zimbabwe: Towards an anthropology of proximity’. We expect to announce full details of the AGM in the June and August issues of AT.

A fascinating Wellcome Medal Lecture was delivered on 8 December by Professor Luigi Capasso of Chieti University, Italy, on ‘The paleobiology of the victims of the volcanic eruption of Herculaneum’ on 25 August, 79 AD. The event was jointly organized by the RAI and the Wellcome Trust, which funds the biennial RAI Wellcome Medal award. The venue was the Wellcome Collection, London. We look for-ward to a new stage of close co-operation between the RAI and the Wellcome Trust in the field of medical anthropology. We are pleased to announce that the Leach-RAI Fellowship for 2008-09 has been awarded to Dr Jamie Cross. The Fellowship pro-gramme is currently hosted at the University of Maynooth, Republic of Ireland. A call for applications for the 2009-2010 Fellowship is published in this issue of AT.