McArthur, Annie Margaret

Annie Margaret McArthur was born in Ararat, Victoria in 1919. She originally studied biochemistry and bacteriology at the University of Melbourne, graduating BSc in 1941 and MSc 1942, and went on to complete a Postgraduate Diploma in nutrition in 1946 at the Australian Institute of Anatomy.

Her long and distinguished career involved working as an assistant Research Officer at the Industrial Chemistry Division of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial research Organisation (CSIRO) from 1943-1946; in 1947 she was a member of the New Guinea Nutrition Research Unit for the Commonwealth Department of Health; and, a nutritionist with the Australian-American Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land, 1948-1949. This early work with people in non-Western societies led to Margaret’s interest in other cultures and her formal study of anthropology. By 1952 she had completed a post graduate Diploma in Social Anthropology at the University of London.

From 1953-1957, McArthur carried out anthropological and nutritional fieldwork among the Kunimaipa people of Papua, whose language she learned to speak. She was awarded both the Walter Mersh Strong research Fellowship from the University of Sydney, 1953-1955 and, the Emslie Horniman Studentship from the Royal Anthropological Institute in London, 1955-1956.

McArthur’s expertise resulted in international work as a consultant. Between 1958 and 1960 she was the Social Anthropology Consultant in Malaya for the World Health Organisation (WHO). In 1961 she was a nutrition consultant for the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). The following year she was appointed as a Research Officer in the Department of Economics, Institute of Advanced Studies at the Australian National University. That same year she was awarded her PhD in social anthropology with her thesis The Kunimaipa: The Social Structure of a Papuan Society (1962). In 1963 she took up temporary lectureship in Anthropology at the University of Manchester. In 1964 she worked for the FAO again, this time in Africa, returning to teach part-time at the London School of Economics and the London School of Hygiene. In 1965 she was offered a lectureship at the University of Sydney- she was the first woman to be offered a tenured position in the Department.

While at Sydney, Margaret maintained her interest in Papuan affairs and in 1968 she returned to Papua to not only cover their election but to also study the social changes in the Kunimaipa Valley since 1957. By 1970 she had been promoted to Senior Lecturer. In 1971 she gave advice on nutritional matters to a research team from the Institute of Dental research who were carrying out a preliminary survey in New Guinea, and in that same year she was an expert witness for the New Guinea wage case. The following year she was again advising the Dental team, and between June 1973 and May 1974 she was a Senior Fellow in the Food Institute of the East-West Centre, Hawaii.

She left Sydney for Honolulu in 1976 to marry Dr Douglas Oliver a retired Professor of Anthropology from Harvard, who shared her interest in PNG. She died after a long illness on May 12 2002.

de Lepervanche, Marie, “Annie Margaret McArthur, 1919-2002” The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 13 (2), pp. 230-231