Academic Career
The University of Sydney was the first university in Australia to teach anthropology. The university was once an academic home to anthropologists such as A.P. Elkin, Raymond Firth, Ian Hogbin, A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, and Camilla Wedgwood. Kaberry studied under A.P. Elkin, a firm believer that female anthropologists were able to give a unique and beneficial perspective of women in various societies – a subject neglected during this time.
During her first years as a graduate student, Kaberry took an interest in New Guinea. Her master's thesis was the result of this interest, and was a survey of the effects of government policies on native conditions. Such an issue would also be seen in her later work in Australia and Africa. She would later renew her Melanesian interests after 1939 when she traveled to New Guinea to study the social organization among the Abelam people of the Sepik District. She became curious in Melanesian diet, specifically the central role yams played. Unfortunately, the effects of World War II shortened her stay.
Read more about this topic: Phyllis Kaberry
Famous quotes containing the words academic and/or career:
“Short of a wholesale reform of college athletics—a complete breakdown of the whole system that is now focused on money and power—the women’s programs are just as doomed as the men’s are to move further and further away from the academic mission of their colleges.... We have to decide if that’s the kind of success for women’s sports that we want.”
—Christine H. B. Grant, U.S. university athletic director. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A42 (May 12, 1993)
“Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)