Founder of Al-Khalifa Business School, H.E. Prof. Sir Manuel Freire-Garabal y Núñez, has been elected as a fellow of the Royal Anthropological of Great Britain and Ireland.

H.E. Prof. Sir Freire-Garabal y Núñez was proposed by Dr. David Shankland, Director of the Royal Anthropological Institute. He was approved as a Fellow at the meeting of the Council on 27 March 2020. His membership number is M35243.

The Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI) is the world’s longest-established scholarly association dedicated to the furtherance of anthropology (the study of humankind) in its broadest and most inclusive sense. The Institute is a non-profit-making registered charity and is entirely independent, with a Director and a small staff accountable to the Council, which in turn is elected annually from the Fellowship. It has a Royal Patron in the person of HRH the Duke of Gloucester KG, GCVO.

The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (RAI) is a long-established anthropological organization, with global membership. Its remit includes all the component fields of anthropology, such as biological anthropology, evolutionary anthropology, social anthropology, cultural anthropology, visual anthropology and medical anthropology, as well as sub-specialisms within these, and interests shared with neighboring disciplines such as human genetics, archaeology and linguistics. It seeks to combine a tradition of scholarship with services to anthropologists, including students.

The RAI promotes the public understanding of anthropology, as well as the contribution anthropology can make to public affairs and social issues. It includes within its constituency not only academic anthropologists, but also those with a general interest in the subject, and those trained in anthropology who work in other fields.

The Institute’s fellows are lineal successors to the founding fellows of the Ethnological Society of London, who in February 1843 formed a breakaway group of the Aborigines’ Protection Society, which had been founded in 1837. The new society was to be ‘a center and depository for the collection and systematization of all observations made on human races’.

Between 1863 and 1870 there were two organizations, the Ethnological Society and the Anthropological Society. The Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (1871) was the result of a merger between these two rival bodies. Permission to add the word ‘Royal was granted in 1907.

Individuals seeking full Fellowship status are usually required to be proposed by current Fellows who personally know the potential member. Fellowship in the Institute is primarily for notable scholars who have professional or academic achievement in the field of the study of humankind or the social sciences. Fellows are elected by the RAI Council and are entitled to use the honorific post-nominal letters FRAI.

The RAI has a unique reference and research collection comprising photos, films, archives and manuscripts.

The photographic library consists of over 75,000 historic prints, negatives, lantern-slides and other images, the earliest dating from the 1860s. The photo library illustrates the great diversity and vitality of the world’s cultures as well as the history of photographic image-making itself.

The RAI is actively involved in developing ethnographic film and video, as a mode of anthropological inquiry and as an educational resource. It has an extensive collection of videos, copies of which are available for sale for educational and academic purposes. Films can be studied and previewed onsite.

The archive and manuscript collection spans a period of over 150 years, providing a unique historical record of the discipline and of the Institute itself. Much unpublished textual and visual material entrusted to the RAI over the years is held in the manuscript collection, which is being conserved and cataloged on a continuing basis.

Access to the RAI Collection is free to all RAI Fellows, Members, Student Associates and all undergraduate students by prior appointment. Others may visit the Collection on payment of an access fee.

The RAI has a close association with the British Museum’s Anthropology Library, which incorporates the former RAI Library given to the Museum in 1976. The Library is located within the Centre for Anthropology at the British Museum and is effectively Britain’s national anthropological library. All may use the Library on-site; RAI Fellows may borrow books acquired by the RAI.

 

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