Ian Cunnison

Ian George Cunnison (13 February 1923 – 16 June 2013) was a Scottish social anthropologist and academic who specialised in the ethnography of Central and East Africa. Regarded as an influential figure in Sudanese anthropology, Cunnison served as the first Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Khartoum in 1959.

Cunnison later served as the founding professor of social anthropology at the University of Hull in 1966 until his retirement in 1989. Cunnison also taught at the University of Manchester. and Baggara Arabs (1966). Cunnison also translated Marcel Mauss's seminal sociological work, The Gift (1954), into English for the first time.

Career

Born in Milngavie, Scotland, Cunnison graduated from the University of Cambridge and later completed a DPhil in anthropology at the University of Oxford. His doctoral research was on the peoples of the Luapula Valley in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and was supported by the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute.

Publications