Audrey I. Richards

Audrey I. Richards (born July 8, 1899, London, Eng.—died June 29, 1984, near Midhurst, West Sussex) was an English social anthropologist and educator known chiefly for her researches among several eastern African peoples, especially the Bemba. She did fieldwork in Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), Uganda, and the Transvaal. Among her subjects of study were social psychology, food culture, nutrition, agriculture, land use, and economic organization.

Richards spent much of her youth in India, where her father served on the Viceroy’s Council. She received her M.A. from Newnham College, Cambridge, in 1928 and studied with Bronisław Malinowski at the London School of Economics (Ph.D., 1929), where she later taught (1931–32, 1935–37). She also taught at the University of Witwatersrand, S.Af. (1938–40), London University (1946–50), Makerere College, Uganda (1950–56), and the University of Cambridge (1956–67), where she founded and directed the Centre for African Studies. Her works include Hunger and Work in a Savage Tribe (1932); Land, Labour and Diet in Northern Rhodesia (1939); Chisungu: A Girl’s Initiation Ceremony Among the Bemba of Northern Rhodesia (1956), a pioneering study of female initiation; and The Multicultural States of East Africa (1969). She was made a Companion of the Order of the British Empire (C.B.E.) in 1955.