Pauline Wiessner

Pauline Wiessner is a Professor at Arizona State University's School of Human Evolution and Social Change and an ASU-SFI Fellow. She holds a BA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College (1969) and a PhD from the University of Michigan (1977). Her research focuses on social networks, cultural institution resilience, and responses to modernization, with 40+ years of fieldwork among the Kalahari San and 30 years with the Enga of Papua New Guinea. She co-founded the Tradition and Transition Fund to address food security for the Kalahari Bushmen and established the Enga Take Anda museum/research center, integrating cultural education into Enga Province schools.

Her expertise spans evolutionary and sociocultural anthropology, emphasizing long-term ethnographic studies. She previously served at the Max Planck Institute for Human Ethology (1981–1996) and the University of Utah (1998–2016). Her contributions earned her membership in the National Academy of Sciences.

Research priorities include documenting traditional knowledge systems, mitigating cultural disruption via modern resources, and fostering intergenerational cultural transmission. Her non-profit work bridges academic research with community-driven solutions in anthropology and development studies.