Polly Wiessner

Pauline (Polly) Wiessner's research focuses on social networks to reduce risk and responses of societies to the breakdown of traditional cultural institutions with modern resources and technology. She has conducted 40 years of research among the Kalahari San and 30 years among the Enga of Papua New Guinea. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2014. Wiessner established a non-profit, the Tradition and Transition Fund, that addresses the current needs of the populations she studies: food security for the Kalahari Bushmen and constructing a museum/research center in Enga, the Enga Take Anda or ‘house of traditional knowledge’. The Enga Take Anda is currently integrating cultural education into all the schools of Enga Province with educational materials produced by Wiessner. In 2019, Wiessner received the Queen’s Jubilee Medal from Papua New Guinea Government for service in preserving cultural knowledge. Governor General of PNG. She received her bachelor’s degree in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College in 1969 and her doctorate at the University of Michigan in 1977. She was a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Human Ethology between 1981 and 1996 and a professor at the University of Utah from 1998 until 2016.