In Memoriam: Robert (Bob) H. Barnes, 11 October 1944 – 6 July 2024
We are sorry to announce the sad news that Emeritus Fellow, Professor Robert H. Barnes, passed away last Saturday, 6 July, at the age of 79, in New Haven, Connecticut, following a fall.
Bob, as he was always known, was a mainstay of the Oxford anthropology community for almost four decades and a Fellow of the College for 25 years.
Bob was born in Jacksonville, Texas, and received his B.A. in Anthropology from Reed College before going on to obtain his B.Litt. and his D.Phil. in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford, under the supervision of Rodney Needham. He became a lecturer in the University of Edinburgh from 1974 to 1977 before taking up a lectureship in social anthropology back at Oxford in 1978 which he held until 1998 when he was awarded the title of Professor of Anthropology. On retirement in 2012, Bob moved to be with his wife, Ruth, in New Haven where she has been the Curator of Indo-Pacific Art at the Yale Art Gallery since 2010. He became an affiliate of Yale University’s Council of Southeast Asia Studies.
Bob was an anthropologist of kinship and Eastern Indonesia (where he carried out fieldwork over five decades), with a worldwide reputation in both fields. His best known publications include: Kedang: A Study of the Collective Thought of an Eastern Indonesian People (OUP, 1974); Josef Kohler, On the Prehistory of Marriage, Totemism, Group Marriage, Mother Right(University of Chicago Press, 1975).Two Crows Denies It: A History of Controversy in Omaha Sociology (Nebraska University Press, 1984); Sea Hunters of Indonesia: Fishers and Weavers of Lamalera (OUP, 1996); A Dictionary of the Kedang Language (Brill, 2013); Excursions into Eastern Indonesia: Essays on History and Social Life (Yale University, 2013).
Together with his colleagues Barry Cunliffe, Howard Morphy and Vernon Reynolds, he helped establish the undergraduate degree in anthropology and archaeology in the late 1980s. The degree quickly became one of the most popular courses in the University and he continued an active role in teaching and examining in it until his retirement.
When Bob was appointed to his position in Oxford in 1978, he was one of a small number of academics in Oxford who held a permanent teaching position which did not have an attached college fellowship. He was part of a campaign to rectify this clear anomaly and, as a result, was invited to join the Governing Body Fellowship of St Antony’s in 1987. He quickly became a key member of the College community, filling multiple important roles, most notably acting several times as Director of the Asian Studies Centre and as a particularly engaged and committed Dean, during which he dealt skilfully with a very wide range of student problems. As a community we were very much in his debt.
Bob will be much missed by all those who were taught by and worked with him over his many decades in Oxford. Our thoughts are particularly with Ruth and his family. In 1969, Bob took Ruth to the top of the Kedang volcano in eastern Indonesia, where they saw the hole from which, according to local legend, mankind emerged (as the original twins) and spread over the globe. They enjoyed an incredibly rich and deep personal and professional relationship that lasted for many decades; when Bob suffered his fall, it was on the date of their 56th wedding anniversary.
There will be a memorial service in New Haven for Bob later this summer, probably in late August, to which any Antonians in the area will be welcome. Details will follow nearer the time. In the meanwhile, the College will fly the flag at half-mast in Bob’s memory.
Roger Goodman, Warden
