IN MEMORIAM
Signe Lise Howell
- July 15, 1942 – d. January 25, 2025
At Vestre Gravlund Nye Kapell on February 6, many members of the International Forum were among the family, friends, students, and colleagues gathered to bid a last farewell to our member Signe Lise Howell, who had died on January 25 at the age of 82. The ceremony included five inspiring eulogies interspersed with unique musical selections – classical, popular, and traditional – forming a heart-warming tribute to a very special woman who had led a very special life.
Signe joined the International Forum in 2016. With her keen interest in literature, she soon started the International Book Club II, with its first meeting in President Sally Bergan’s home in August of 2017. She also became active in the Beginner’s Bridge Group, resourcefully finding a café in Majorstuen where the group could meet for their games. From 2019 until 2021, she served as a Deputy Board Member for the Forum. Then, as a leader of the Monthly Meeting Committee in 2022-23, she helped plan and execute the Forum’s monthly gatherings, securing several speakers through her contacts at the University of Oslo, where she had been Professor in the Department of Social Anthropology since 1989. Her experience, leadership talent and energy, coupled with her warm, frank and inquisitive personality, made her a highly appreciated addition to the International Forum family.
Signe was born in 1942 in the Telemark town of Tinn, leaving Norway after her early school years to travel, explore and study abroad. With an adventurous spirit and an intense desire to learn, she lived for a period on the Greek island of Hydra, with the art milieu as her focus. Later, in London, she co-founded an experimental street theatre – The Theatre of Mistakes – that operated in the 1970s and 80s. She was in Cairo taking a class to learn Arabic when she met her husband!
Her academic pursuits began with history studies at the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies, followed by anthropology at Oxford University, where she received a PhD in 1980. Her dissertation was based on 18 months of field work in the Malaysian rain forest, living among the Chewong natives. Her aim was to learn how people develop in very different settings and to explore what it means to be human. Her research has been praised as anticipating the trend toward recognition of ontology (the nature of being) in anthropological studies. She shared her experiences from this project as the speaker at IF’s monthly meeting in January 2024.
Signe’s research opened new directions in anthropological study. In her field work in the hierarchical society on the Indonesian island of Flores, which was very different from the egalitarian Chewong society, she explored the
‘moralities’ of cultures, producing the monograph Society and Cosmos (1983). This is now an important reference point in anthropological research. An anthology she edited later in Norway, Societies at Peace (1989), offered a radically new approach to concepts of peacefulness in human society, where aggression and conflict were no longer assumed to be unavoidable aspects of humanity.
After four years as university lecturer in Edinburgh, she joined the Department of Social anthropology at the University of Oslo in 1987. Her last field work project dealt with kinship in Norway, focusing on transnational adoption. She combined classical kinship studies with more recent concepts of nationalism and ethnicity, coining the term ‘kinning’. Her conclusions earned her the prestigious University of Oslo Research Award in 2007 and are considered to be even more relevant today than 20 years ago.
Signe’s untiring quest for knowledge and engaging manner were inspiring and motivating for both students and colleagues at the University. Her knowledge, leadership skills and positive demeanour were also evident during her eight years of involvement with the International Forum. She was resourceful and supportive, showing a genuine interest in her fellow members, and will be fondly remembered by all who came into contact with her.
The International Forum sends our heartfelt condolences to her husband Desmond, daughter Tika, and their families.
Robin Wittusen