In Memoriam: Elizabeth Florence Colson, 1917-2016

Elizabeth Colson, professor emerita of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, died last month at her home in Zambia in Africa, after suffering a stroke. She was 99 years old.

Dr. Colson was a native of Minnesota and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in anthropology at the University of Minnesota. She earned a Ph.D. in social anthropology at Harvard University.

After conducting research on American Indian women, in 1946 she began work at the Rhodes-Livingston Institute in what was then Northern Rhodesia. She served as the institute’s director from 1947 to 1951 and then conducted several research projects involving African populations.

Dr. Colson joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley in 1964 and taught there for 20 years until she reached the then mandatory retirement age of 67. Dr. Colson then returned to Zambia to continue her field work and remained there for the rest of her life.