Dr Siobhan Magee

Sabbatical Fellow

Dr Siobhan Magee

Sabbatical Fellow, August - December 2024

Home Institution: University of Edinburgh

Siobhan Magee is a Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh. Her work includes Material Culture and Kinship in Poland: An Ethnography of Fur and Society (Bloomsbury 2019) and (as co-editor) Marriage in Past, Present, and Future Tense (UCL Press 2021). She has diverse interests that include material culture, politics, and biography, but most of her work looks at society through the lens of so-called 'personal' relationships, exploring gender, generation, reproduction, and sexuality. She is completing a book on marriage in Virginia.

Project title: Biography, mourning, and kinship in UK and US higher education philanthropy

Spend time in a UK or US university and you are sure to be surrounded by names and biographies linked to donors or their loved ones. What is donated ranges in scale from institutions themselves and substantial real estate such as named libraries, to comparatively modest scholarships, fellowships, and prizes- sometimes named after deceased faculty or students.

My project looks at the historical contingencies through which people began to make private donations to higher education - and how practices regarding naming became established, have changed over time, and vary between the UK and the US. Additionally, the project explores if and how recipients of named prizes and scholarships feel these awards have influenced their own trajectories - and how much they know about those who established the awards, or those after whom they are named.