Cambridge Rivers: Our Story

Cambridge Rivers Press Ltd is partnered with the Cambridge Rivers Project, University of Cambridge. In the past thirty years the Rivers Project has founded and developed a variety of academic, educational, cultural and development projects worldwide. The Cambridge Rivers Press Ltd works with its global partners to bring these unique and valuable projects to a wider audience.

History of Cambridge Rivers Project, University of Cambridge

Cambridge Rivers Project was founded by historian and anthropologist Professor Alan Macfarlane, FBA, and launched in 1983 within the Department of Social Anthropology and King’s College, University of Cambridge. It is named after one of the founders of modern fieldwork anthropology and a distinguished doctor, the Cambridge academic W.H Rivers, who went on the second Torres Straits anthropological expedition with AC Haddon in 1898. Click here to learn more about W.H.Rivers.

The project is dedicated to innovation and communication in anthropology. In particular, it is concerned with collecting and conserving information about disappearing worlds and in spreading knowledge of different cultures through teaching and research, making material on a broad range of cultures in Asia and the West available through the use of a multi-media database and the internet. Alongside academic research projects, it hosts cultural exchanges between the UK and Asia in the fields of poetry, opera, literature, film and photography.

The project was housed in the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge, from 1983 and was supported by several respected scholars, enterprenures  and organizations, in particular Professor Sir Jack Goody, Sir Charles Chadwyck-Healey, The Leverhulme Trust, The Economic and Social Research Council, The Nuffield Foundation, Vanishing Worlds Foundation, The Renaissance Trust. 

It has been formally affiliated to the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology since October 2014. The Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) has one of the most important collections of its kind in the UK, with artefacts from every inhabited continent in the world and every period of human history and prehistory. Since its establishment in 1884 it has been a centre for teaching and research within the University of Cambridge. The Museum hosts several major international research projects and collaborates with international partners on many more. In addition to graduate and undergraduate teaching within the University, the MAA also offers a range of educational programmes tailored to learners of all ages and backgrounds.

In recent years, Cambridge Rivers Project focus on digital museum and archive projects which research and present the objects and archives collected in different organizations and shares the knowledge with global audience through publication, exhibition, workshop and online platform. Click here to learn more about the digital projects.

The project is currently chaired by its founder Professor Alan Macfarlane, FBA and directed by Zilan Wang. Click here to learn more about the founder and the director.