Richards, Audrey (1899-1984)

English social anthropologist. She published her first study of primitive tribal life in 1932 without carrying out any fieldwork, but later undertook firsthand studies among primitive societies in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). From 1950 to 1966 she was director of the East African Institute of Social Research in Uganda.

Richards was born in London, and spent most of her childhood in India where her father worked as a lawyer, returning to the UK in 1911. She studied at Newnham College, Cambridge, graduating in 1921.