This lecture series commemorates the intellectual influence of the Gavan’s on the first generation of anthropologists trained at MU. Jim Gavan twice served as Chair of the Department of Anthropology during its formative years in the 1960s and 1970s.  He also served as secretary-treasurer of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, and later as its president. Jim was a tireless opponent of the teaching of scientific creationism in public schools.  Margaret was an equal partner in every aspect of Jim’s life, and regularly nurtured and encouraged undergraduate and postgraduate anthropology students. Jim and Margaret often brought important anthropologists to MU to deliver formal lectures on campus and to anchor informal discussions at their house. In 1995, Margaret Schoeninger, his daughter and a well-known biological anthropologist herself, along with Bruce and Dorothy Gelvin, two of Gavan’s students, established a fund to support a public lecture series in honor of Professor Gavan and his wife Margaret. Every year our department hosts the James A. and Margaret S. Gavan Lecture, cycling through the subfields of archaeology, cultural/linguistic anthropology, and biological anthropology.

Past Gavan Speakers

• 2023 - Josh Snodgrass
• 2023 - Daniel Nettle
• 2022 – Thomas Wynn
• 2019 - Dan Hruschka
• 2018 - Virpi Lummaa
• 2017 - Tim Pauketat
• 2016 - Pascal Boyer
• 2016 - Cynthia Beall
• 2014 - David Meltzer
• 2010 - Monique Borgerhoff Mulder
• 2007 - William Leonard
• 2004 - Donald Grayson
• 2002 - Sarah Thomason
• 2000 - Russell Bernard
• 1999 - George Armelagos
• 1998 - Anna Roosevelt
• 1998 - Nancy Scheper-Hughes
• 1996 - Jane Hill
• 1995 - Margaret Schoeninger