Professor Margaret Conkey awarded the 2009 "Chancellor's Award for Advancing Institutional Excellence"

Margaret W. Conkey, Class of 1960 Professor of Anthropology, has been named the 2009 recipient of the Chancellor's Award for Advancing Institutional Excellence. This award recognizes her dedication toward increasing equitable access to education, to highlighting inequalities through her research, and to redressing them through service to the Anthropology department, the division of Social Sciences, the Berkeley campus, University of California system, and the disciplines of anthropology and archaeology.

Professor Conkey is internationally recognized as one of the leading voices in the development of archaeology of gender. In recognition of this work, she was selected as the Distinguished Lecturer of the Archeology Division of the American Anthropological Association (1997) and as the plenary speaker of the World Archaeological Congress (2003), and as a keynote speaker for numerous conferences on gender and feminist practice. Professor Conkey's excellence as an inspiring teacher has been recognized multiple times, with the University of California, Berkeley's Distinguished Teaching Award of the Division of Social Sciences in 1996 and Educational Initiatives Award in 2001, and awards from SUNY Binghamton in 1983 and from Phi Beta Kappa in 1993 and 2003.

Professor Conkey has served as a member of the NSF Diversity Initiative in Graduate Studies and on the Social Sciences Advisory Committee, the Graduate Affirmative Action Advisory Committee (2003), the Academic Senate Committee on the Status of Women and Minorities (where she was Chair from 2006-2008, following service from 2002-2004, and continues as a member), the Campus Task Force on Gender and Diversity in Recruitment (2000-2001), the Advisory Committee of the Beatrice Bain Center (2000-2001, serving as Chair in 2004), and the Executive Committee for the Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender and Sexuality (1996-1998, and is currently Co-Chair of the Gender, Equity and Diversity  Subcommittee for the University Athletic Board. In 2008, she was selected to receive the Faculty Service Award of the UC Berkeley Academic Senate. Professor Conkey has also served multiple times on the selection committee for the UCOP President's Postdoctoral Fellowships, including as the Chair of the Social Sciences review committee in 2009. Since 2006 she has served as the UCB representative to UCAAD, the system-wide Academic Senate committee for diversity.


Outside the university, in 1975-1977, Professor Conkey was a member and Chair of the initial Committee on the Status of Women in Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association. As liaison from that committee to the Society for American Archaeology from 1976-1977, she played an integral role in the founding of the Committee on the Status of Women in Archaeology, serving from 1978 to 1982. From 1989-1992 she served again on the American Anthropological Association Committee. She was also Chair of the Association for Feminist Anthropology, from 1995 to 1997. In 2008, she began a term of office as the President of the Society for American Archaeology, elected on a platform of efforts to diversify the discipline. Professor Conkey was recognized for this extraordinary history with the Squeaky Wheel Award of the Committee on the Status of Women in Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association in 2008, recognizing her efforts in gender equity and improving the status of women in the profession and discipline. She initiated the "Women-to-WAC" fundraising drive that brought international women archaeologists to the 2004 meeting of the World Archaeological Congress, focusing especially on assisting indigenous women and women from countries where governments would not select women for funding. National recognition of her role in fostering all forms of diversity is evident in her inclusion on the fellowship review committees of the American Association of University Women in 1987 and 1991 and the Ford Foundation Diversity Dissertation and Post-Doctoral Fellowships Program in 2006 and 2008.

Published April 6, 2009