Commemorative Lecture title: “Female Pioneers of the Early 20th-Century Study of Religion”
Professor Jane Shaw is the Principal of Harris Manchester College, Professor of History of Religion and Pro-Vice Chancellor at the University of Oxford. She is the author of Octavia, Daughter of God: the story of a female messiah and her followers (2011) andMiracles in Enlightenment England (2006).

Barbara E. Ward Commemorative Lecture:
Born in 1919, Barbara E. Ward “studied Chinese societies, primarily in Hong Kong, but also in other regions of South Asia for close on thirty-two years “ (Elizabeth Croll). She read history in Cambridge, then spent some time as a teacher in Ghana where she came under the influence of the anthropologist Meyer Fortes. Back in London for a year she joined the Institute for Education, where she was introduced to sociology and social anthropology, finally moving to LSE for graduate work. And in 1959 she undertook a study commissioned by UNESCO on the new public roles and status of women in order to further appreciation of Asian cultural values. She was interested in how men and women view the world, and became increasingly interested in “the relationships between ideology and action” (ibid). She produced 14 papers before her death in 1983.
Barbara studied history at Newnham College, an all-women’s college of the University of Cambridge. She then attended the University of London, where she gained a teaching qualification in 1942. For the next five years she taught in England and West Africa. In 1949, she completed a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics having studied the Ewe speaking people of Ghana.
In 1950, Barbara moved to Hong Kong. She taught sociology at Chinese University of Hong Kong, rising to the rank of reader. She spent three years studying the anthropology of the Kau Sai people. She returned many times to China and wrote about the New Territories area.