Encountering Africa: Henri Gaden's Life and Photography in Colonial French West Africa, 1894-1939

Reproduced with the permission of the
Archives nationales d'outre-mer, Aix-en-Provence, France

Henri Gaden was a French Colonial officer, who lived in West Africa for 45 years. An ethnographer, linguist and gifted photographer, Gaden captured on camera a rich variety of encounters with Africa – from landscapes, architecture and trade to military campaigns and colonial life at numerous outposts. He also documented everyday village life, local music, dance and ritual. Gaden’s striking photographic images, exhibited for the first time at MUSA, provide rare insights into French West Africa in colonial times and the remarkable people he met.

Exhibition at MUSA
5 October 2017–25 February 2018
7a The Scores, St Andrews, KY16 9AR

New research centre at St Andrews: CATCH

The Centre for Archaeology, Technology and Cultural Heritage (CATCH) is a multi-disciplinary centre that brings together researchers from across the University of St Andrews. The Centre promotes research into all aspects of past human activity from across the globe, with the aim of making our research accessible to the widest audience as possible. The Centre brings together arts and sciences in order to investigate how humans have been influenced by, and changed, their environment.

The Schools, Departments and Units involved in CATCH are: Art History, Classics, Computer Science, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Geography & Sustainable Development, History, Museum Collections Unit and Social Anthropology.

"Digitising cave art will prevent it being lost forever"
New Scientist, April 2014

Prof. Rapport honoured with RAI Rivers Memorial Award

Professor Nigel Rapport, Department of Social Anthropology, has recently been awarded the 2012 Rivers Memorial Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI). The Medal, founded in 1923 by the Council of the Institute in memory of its late President, William Halse Rivers, is among the highest honours conferred by the RAI. It signals ‘a body of work which has made a significant contribution to social, physical or cultural anthropology or archaeology’. However, in the 1960s, the rules were amended to reflect anthropological work in a broader sense.  The Medal is 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.

Best Master's and Best Doctoral Prizes for collaborative programmes in Anthropology and History with Seville

In 2004, Professor Tristan Platt (Social Anthropology/Amerindian Studies, School of Philosophical, Anthropological and Film Studies) took up the offer of Dr Juan Marchena Fernández of the Universidad Pablo de Olavide (UPO, Seville, Spain) to join him and other colleagues, including Dr George Lovell (Queens University Canada) and the late Dr Jan de Vos (Chiapas, Mexico), in focusing the Master’s and Doctoral Program in Latin American History at UPO around the theme of “Mundos Indígenas” (“Indigenous Worlds”). Since then, Professor Platt has served each year as part of a team of professors who teach and supervise annual intakes of 20 to 30 students. He also takes part as member of Tribunals judging the dissertations and theses.

"Smiles under the Giralda"
The first promotion of students in 2005
[photo by George Lovell]

Most of the students arrive to pursue graduate studies at UPO from all over Latin America for a four-month residency in Seville, made possible by scholarships granted by UPO after a rigorous screening process. The goal of the UPO program is to train new generations of students who can return to their home nations in Latin America better prepared to teach, research, and work there in a variety of capacities, with increased knowledge of indigenous issues foremost in mind. Since the program began, some 200 students have graduated from it, more than 30 of them now doctorates.

In March 2012, UPO received two honours in recognition of these innovative endeavours: the Prize for Best Master's Program and the Prize for Best Doctoral Program, both awarded by the Asociación Universitaria Iberoamericana de Postgrado (AUIP). The AUIP, which translates as “Iberoamerican Universities Association of Postgraduate Studies”, is an international consortium to which most Latin American, Portuguese and Spanish universities belong. At a time when economic crisis threatens the intellectual well-being of higher education throughout Spain, the prizes extended Dr Marchena's “Mundo Indigenas” program has given a boost to the morale of all involved, professors, students and senior UPO administrators alike. 

The University of St Andrews is happy to have contributed to this outcome through the participation of Professor Platt. Social Anthropology now has a cotutelle studying Brazilian ethnohistory, Pablo Ibáñez Bonillo, who is supervised  by Dr Marchena at the UPO, with Professor Platt and Dr Mark Harris for the University of St Andrews.

Seeing in a Wider Sense

"Seeing in a Wider Sense" is an exhibition, at the St Andrews Museum, which brings together distinguished Fife based artists Will Maclean and Marian Leven with two members of the Department of Social Anthropology, Dr Stephanie Bunn and Professor Peter Gow.

Both artists and anthropologists reveal aspects of human interaction through their work. They aim to lead the audience to explore and understand aspects of modes of living, such as hunting, herding or fishing, from visual and anthropological perspectives. Artwork and artefacts from Fife, Lewis, the Amazon and Tian Shan provide a starting point for dialogue between disciplines.

The exhibition runs through mid-March as part of the University's 600th Anniversary celebrations.