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Thayer "Ted" Scudder

Professor of Anthropology, Emeritus
A.B., Harvard College, 1952; Ph.D., Harvard University, 1960. Assistant Professor, Caltech, 1964-66; Associate Professor, 1966-69; Professor, 1969-2000; Professor, Emeritus, 2000-.

Profile

In 1956, Thayer "Ted" Scudder and Elizabeth Colson (d. 2016) initiated a study of 57,000 Gwembe Tonga prior to the people's compulsory resettlement in connection with the construction of the Kariba Dam on the Zambezi River. Though both researchers documented the socio-cultural systems, Scudder concentrated on economic activities and the Gwembe Tonga's relationship to the Middle Zambezi Valley. Scudder and Colson returned in 1962 for another year's study to observe how the people coped with resettlement.

In the mid-1960s they decided to extend what had originally been designed and financed as a before and after study by the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute (now part of the University of Zambia) into a more systematic, long-term study. In the 1970s Colson and Scudder recruited and supervised five graduate students who expanded the scope of the Gwembe Tonga Research Program (GTRP) to further include those Gwembe Tonga who had migrated from the Middle Zambezi Valley to rural areas and cities on the Zambian Plateau.

In 1962, while an Assistant Professor at the American University of Cairo, Scudder had the opportunity to undertake a second resettlement study, as a team

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Research Summary
Long-term Community Studies; Socio-economic Impacts of Large-scale Development Projects in the Tropics and Subtropics
Selected Awards
  • John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellow, 1975
  • Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science as of January 1980
  • First Recipient of the Solon T. Kimball Award of the American Anthropological Association for Public and Applied Anthropology, 1984
  • Recipient of the Edward J. Lehman Award of the American Anthropological Association for "forwarding the interests of anthropology by demonstrating the discipline's relevance to government, business and industry," 1991
  • Commissioner, World Commission on Dams, 1998–2000
  • First recipient of the Lucy Mair Medal for Applied Anthropology of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, April 1998
  • 1999 Bronislaw Malinowski Awardee of the Society for Applied Anthropology, May 1998
  • 2005 The John Phillips Award presented by the Trustees of the Phillips Exeter Academy
  • Academic Years 2011–2012 and 2012–2013 Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Lecturer with two-day visits to the University of the Pacific (California), Macalester College (Minnesota), Hobart and William Smith College (New York), Birmingham-Southern College (Alabama) and the University of Mississippi
  • Associated Students of California Institute of Technology (ASCIT) Excellence in Teaching Award: 1983–1984, 1987–1988, and 1990–91

Featured News

Policy in Progress
January 04, 2024
There is a long tradition of HSS scholars—motivated by social, economic, and political problems and opportunities—conducting research that has an impact on public policy.
The Long View
August 20, 2021
Caltech has a new professorship in the social sciences, courtesy of retired anthropology professor Thayer "Ted" Scudder and his wife, Eliza Scudder.
Dams and the Damage They Do
October 31, 2018
Ted Scudder has spent over six decades studying the impacts large dams have on rivers, on the people displaced by them, and on the countries that built them. During that time, he's come to see them causing more harm than good. He's published a new book explaining why.
Read more news

Selected Publications

For a complete publications list, see feeds.library.caltech.edu