Annual Report for 2010 “Supporting worldwide research in all branches of Anthropology” Table of Contents Chairman’s Introduction .............................................................................. 3 President’s Report ....................................................................................... 4 Program Highlights ...................................................................................... 6 Institutional Development Grants .......................................................... 6 International Symposia and Workshops ............................................... 9 Wenner-Gren Symposium Publication Series ...................................... 9 Wenner-Gren Symposium Publication Series and Current Anthropology ............................................................... 10 Initiatives Program and Historical Archives Program ....................... 11 International Symposia ........................................................................ 12 Meetings of the Anthropology Section of the New York Academy of Sciences ....................................................................................... 15 Osmundsen Initiative Grantees ........................................................... 16 Hunt Postdoctoral Fellows ................................................................... 19 Wadsworth Fellows .............................................................................. 24 2010 Grantees Dissertation Fieldwork Grants ............................................................. 28 Post-Ph.D. Research Grants ................................................................ 42 Conference and Workshop Grants ...................................................... 46 International Collaborative Research Grants ..................................... 49 New and Continuing Wadsworth Fellowships .................................... 50 Initiatives ............................................................................................... 52 Historical Archives Program ................................................................ 53 Major Grant Program Statistics ................................................................ 54 Financial Statements ................................................................................. 62 Leadership .................................................................................................. 75 Reviewers during 2010 .............................................................................. 76 Staff ............................................................................................................. 78 2 Chairman’s Introduction Seth J. Masters Chairman, Board of Trustees Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Inc. The Wenner-Gren Foundation Board of Trustees, officers, and staff are pleased to publish this 2010 annual report. This report highlights the broad range and global breadth of the programs Wenner-Gren supports to promote anthropological research around the world. President Leslie Aiello has continued to both enhance Wenner-Gren’s existing activities, and launched exciting new initiatives. Among the enhancements to the Foundation's activities in 2010, I would like to highlight the return to historic funding levels after necessary economies of the preceding year. as well as developments to the Foundation’s website to enhance engagement with the anthropological community. One of the new initiatives we are particularly excited about is the launch of the Wenner-Gren Symposium Publication Series as supplementary issues of our journal, Current Anthropology, which will make the outcomes of our biannual symposium series more widely available. Wenner-Gren funds its operations and programs from the investment returns achieved on its endowment. Although global capital markets continue to be volatile, Wenner-Gren's management procedures and conservative financial policies have helped us navigate this difficult period better than many peers. Our Budget and Investment Committee, chaired by Bill Cobb, deserves special recognition for delivering superior long-term investment returns with relatively low risk. As a result, the Foundation remains strong, and is positioned to pursue its mission for the foreseeable future. Finally, Wenner-Gren's ability to keep abreast of the issues facing anthropology would not be possible without the collaboration, advice, and contributions from the community we serve. I would like to extend our deepest gratitude to the past and present Wenner-Gren Advisory Committee members, as well as to the many anthropologists who have participated in the Foundation's programs and activities. Seth J. Masters Chairman, Board of Trustees Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Inc. 3 President’s Report Leslie C. Aiello, President In 2010 the Foundation enjoyed in a stronger fiscal position than in 2009, having recovered approximately two-thirds of the funds lost during the 2008/2009 recession. As the result we were able to reverse the majority of the economies introduced in 2009 and return to historic funding levels across our programs. This was particularly significant for the Dissertation Fieldwork Grant program, our largest funding program, where the grant maximum had been cut by 40% and the success rate by 33%. We were also in the position to plan for future development. We are considering an increase in the grant maximum for the Conference and Workshop program, which has been fixed at $15,000 since 1991. Inflation has eroded the real value of this grant to the extent that it is difficult today for applicants to organize and run the type of discussion meeting the Foundation prioritizes. Significantly, plans also include a number of initiatives to increase the engagement of the Foundation with the discipline of Anthropology. For example, we will be developing instructional videos for the web site to improve grant writing skills for our applicants and restructuring the web site to highlight the potential of our extensive database for academic networking and our historical materials for teaching and educational purposes. More ambitious plans include the introduction of an Engaged Anthropology Grant to provide funds for our completed grantees to return to their field sites to engage the relevant academic community with their research and/or to share their results with their research community. The possibility of organizing grantees’ workshops is also being considered. These would provide valuable opportunities for our grantees to engage with others working on similar research topics and also help to showcase some of the most innovative research sponsored by the Foundation. In addition to our restored funding capability and regular program activities, some of the accomplishments of 2010 include the publication of the first two open access supplementary issues of the Foundation’s journal, Current Anthropology (CA). The decision was taken in 2009 to terminate the Wenner-Gren International Symposium series published by Berg Publishers (Oxford), and from 2010 onward all outputs of Foundation-organized symposia will appear as supplementary CA issues. This has many advantages including wide circulation, electronic access and (for the participants) peer-reviewed publication in a high- 4 President’s Report, continued impact journal. It is expected that this change will significantly raise the profile of the symposia, which have been a center-piece of Foundation activities since the late 1950s. In November 2010 we also launched the History module on our web site. This was the culmination of a year’s effort by Foundation staff to present the Foundation’s history in an assessable and compelling fashion. This is a work in progress and will continue to be so in the coming years, but the module now includes a narrative history of the Foundation and its people as well as histories of its varied programs, conferences, initiatives and publication series. It also includes downloadable audio recordings of lectures given between 1940s and 1970s by some of the leaders of the field, a valuable teaching and historical resource. We are also pleased to have awarded the fourth Institutional Development Grant to the Institute of Archaeology, University of the Philippines (Quezon City, Philippines) who have partnered with the Department of Prehistory, Museum of Natural History (Paris, France) to build and strengthen their doctoral program. In addition, a successful Wenner-Gren Symposium was held on the topic of The Biological Anthropology of Modern Human Populations: World Histories, National Styles, and International Networks (March 5-12, 2010, at the Hotel Rosa dos Ventos, Teresópolis, Brazil). These as well as other activities are profiled under the “Program Highlights” section of this annual report. 2010 was a positive year for the Foundation primarily because of the hard work of the Investment & Budget Committee in facilitating fiscal recovery. However, we are mindful that the future may be uncertain. Our procedures are under continuous review to ensure that the Foundation continues to provide maximum support for the discipline while at the same time preserving the endowment for future generations of Anthropologists. The Board of Trustees, academic Advisory Council and staff are partners in ensuring ongoing Foundation success. I am most grateful for the help of this strong and dedicated team in this endeavor. Leslie C. Aiello President Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Inc. 5