Signe Lise Howell (born 15 July 1942) is a Norwegian

social anthropologist Social anthropology is the study of patterns of behaviour in human societies and cultures. It is the dominant constituent of anthropology throughout the United Kingdom and much of Europe, where it is distinguished from cultural anthropology. In t ...

Personal life

Howell was born in

Tinn Tinn is a municipality in Telemark in the county of Vestfold og Telemark in Norway. It is part of the traditional regions of Upper Telemark and Øst-Telemark. The administrative centre of the municipality is the town of Rjukan. The parish of ...

to physician Finn Oddvar Lie and Lise Thomassen. She was married to performance artist Anthony Howell from 1970 to 1977, and to Desmond James McNeill from 1986.

Career

Howell was a co-founder of the experimental street theatre The Theatre of Mistakes in the 1960s. She studied history at the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies and social anthropology at the

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to th ...

. She investigated social structures in South-East Asia, and made field studies among the

Chewong Cheq Wong (Ceq Wong, Chewong) is an Austroasiatic language spoken in the Malay Peninsula. It belongs to the Northern subbranch of the Aslian languages The Aslian languages () are the southernmost branch of Austroasiatic languages spoken on ...

people in Malaya and

Lio Vanda Maria Ribeiro Furtado Tavares de Vasconcelos (born 17 June 1962), known professionally as Lio, is a Portuguese-Belgian singer and actress who was a pop icon in France and Belgium during the 1980s. Life and career Vanda Maria Ribeiro Furt ...

people in Flores in Indonesia. She was appointed professor at the

University of Oslo The University of Oslo ( no, Universitetet i Oslo; la, Universitas Osloensis) is a public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the highest ranked and oldest university in Norway. It is consistently ranked among the top universit ...

from 1989. Among her works are ''Chewong Myths and Legends'' from 1982, and ''Society and Cosmos. Chewong of Peninsular Malaysia'' from 1984. She co-edited ''Blod – tykkere enn vann? Betydninger av slektskap i Norge'' (2001).

References

1942 births Living people People from Tinn Alumni of SOAS University of London Alumni of the University of Oxford Norwegian expatriates in the United Kingdom Norwegian anthropologists Norwegian women anthropologists Academic staff of the University of Oslo {{Norway-academic-bio-stub