Marion Pearsall

Marion Pearsall (April 27, 1923, Brooklyn, New York – June 15, 1984) was an anthropologist and university professor, who was a leader in the development of both medical anthropology and applied social and cultural anthropology, and an authority on the southern American cultures.

She spent the majority of her career at the University of Kentucky and its Medical Center.

Career Marion Pearsall undertook her doctoral research in southern Appalachia, and published findings from her research and return visits in her book, Little Smoky Ridge, published in 1959. She taught at the University of Arkansas in 1950, and then travelled to Nyasaland in Africa to take a position as a research fellow at Rhodes-Livingstone Institute in 1951, returning to teach at the University of Alabama from 1952 to 1956. She was the editor of the Society for Applied Anthropology journal, Human Organization, from 1966 to 1983. Her professional library and papers were left to the Department of Behavioral Sciences at the University of Kentucky, and her archive is located at the University of Kentucky library.