The Australian Women's Register

Summary

Annie Margaret McArthur led a distinguished career as an academic and an international consultant in the field of nutrition. Her research interests included Aboriginal Australia, Papua New Guinea and the Pacific. She paid particular attention to the contribution of women to the food supply and subsistence.

In 1965, McArthur was the first woman to be offered a tenured position in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Sydney.

When McArthur died in 2002, she bequeathed property to the University of Melbourne. The McArthur Fellowship, for postdoctoral studies in the humanities and social sciences, was subsequently established in her honour.

Events

• 1941

  Bachelor of Science, University of Melbourne

  Graduated
• 1942

  Master of Science, University of Melbourne

  Graduated
• 1946

  Diploma in Nutrition, Australian Institute of Anatomy

  Graduated
• 1952

  Diploma in Social Anthropology, University of London

  Graduated
• 1953 - 1955

  Received the Walter Mersh Strong Research Fellowship from the University of Sydney, which she used to carry out anthropological and nutritional fieldwork among the Kunimaipa people of Papua

  Fellowship
• 1955 - 1956

  Received the Emslie Horniman Studentship from the Royal Anthropological Institute of London, which she used to continued her research in Papua.

  Studentship
• 1962

  Awarded Doctorate of Philosophy in social anthropology

  Awarded
• 1943 - 1945

  Assistant Research Officer at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), where she was involved in the development of waterproof containers to transport food to troops in the Pacific.

• 1947

  Member of the New Guinea Nutrition Research Unit, Commonwealth Department of Health

• 1948 - 1949

  Nutritionist, Australian-American scientific expedition to Arnhem Land

• 1958 - 1960

  Social Anthropology Consultant for the World Health Organisation to the government of Malaya

• 1961

  Nutrition consultant for the Food and Agriculture Organisation to the government of Indonesia.

• 1962

  Research Officer, Department of Economics, Institute of Advanced Studies at the Australian National University

• 1963

  Temporary lecturer in Anthropology, University of Manchester

• 1964

  Nutrition consultant for the Food and Agriculture Organisation in Africa

• 1965

  Taught part-time at the London School of Economics and the London School of Hygiene

• 1965

  Appointed Lecturer at University of Sydney – the first woman to be offered a tenured position in the Department of Anthropology

  Appointed
• 1970

  Promoted to Senior Lecturer, University of Sydney

  Promoted
• 1973 - 1974

  Senior Fellow, East-West Centre, Hawaii

  Appointed
• 1976

  Married Dr Douglas Oliver, a retired Professor of Anthropology from Harvard

  Married
• 1976

  Left Sydney to resettle in Hawaii, where she continued her studies of the ethnography of the Kunimaipa peop

• 2002

  Died in Honolulu

  Died