ENGLAND: THE OTHER WITHIN

Analysing the English Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum

PRM Teaching Introduction

Alison Petch,
Researcher 'The Other Within' project

Diploma in Anthropology Class of 1910-11, Front Row Henry Balfour, Arthur Thomson and R.R. Marett

Diploma in Anthropology Class of 1910-11, Front Row Henry Balfour, Arthur Thomson and R.R. Marett

The Pitt Rivers Museum is a University Museum, part of the University of Oxford. In addition to the usual functions and services offered by a museum, this Museum has offered taught courses and research degrees from 1893. In the Museum's Annual Reports information has been given about what courses are being taught each year, this information is difficult to obtain and assimilate even within the Museum and these pages have therefore been prepared to give easier access to this data.

The following extracts regarding teaching given below are taken straight from the published Annual Reports of the Museum which have been published each year between 1893 and this year:

Section 1 - Annual Reports 1893 to 1941-2
Section 2 - Annual Reports 1942-3 to 1954-5
Section 3 - Annual Reports 1955-6 to 1963-4
Section 4 - Annual Reports 1964-5 to 1982-3
Section 5 - Annual Reports 1983-4 to 1992-3
Section 6 - Annual Reports 1993-4 to 2005-6

Please note that these edited extracts from the Annual Reports omit almost all mention to teaching outside of the mainstream Diploma / Masters teaching in the Pitt Rivers Museum. In addition to the activities recorded here staff supervised research students, lectured at other institutions, and lectured to visiting groups and schoolchildren. Although all teaching in the Museum since 1900 has involved all the collections, obviously this will have included the English collections.

A more detailed account of Balfour's teaching, written by Fran Larson, can be found here.

A more detailed account of Blackwood's teaching, written by Fran Larson, can be found here.

Further information about the formal teaching in the Museum, especially in the early years, can be obtained from the University of Oxford Gazette.

To find out more about the history of the teaching of anthropology at the University of Oxford please see:
Peter Riviére [ed.] 2007 A History of Oxford Anthropology Berghahn Books

Note: Between 1893 and 1937-8 the phrases 'the Curator' or 'I' both refer to Henry Balfour