Alumni Profiles: Caroline Harper

Dr Caroline Harper (Archaeology and Anthropology, 1978)

By Wendy Holden (English, 1983)

‘I’m basically curious!’ says Dr Caroline Harper. ‘I’m especially interested in material cultures and identity, but also simply how people express and understand “belonging”’. This urge to understand has shaped her career. After many years working all over the world for institutions like the UN and Save The Children, she is now the Overseas Development Institute’s Director of Gender Equality and Social Inclusion, a post held for over a decade.

Caroline read Archaeology and Anthropology at Girton, coming up in 1978 in the last all-female year. ‘Cambridge definitely made me a feminist. The ratio of men to women was said to be 8:1. And the boys seemed so comfortable—many having come from public schools whereas I’d barely learnt how to use a library.’

The boys seemed especially comfortable on the river, Caroline noticed. It was somewhere she herself had grown to love. ‘Being tall and having a very long “reach” I was scooped up into the Girton first boat in my first term and never looked back. I loved it, even the 6 a.m. bike rides to break the river ice in February and the occasional in-boat fainting from pure exhaustion!

‘But I was very aware of the sexism on the river. We had to borrow boats from St John’s College when they were not using them. Women were not allowed to row at Henley, and in the Blues battle with Oxford, where it seemed men simply had to step into their boat and lock in their oars, (not even win), to get a ‘full’ Blue, women had much higher and more difficult targets set for their designated ‘half’ Blue—they had to win over Oxford and win several other events. I recall if they lost one event, they got nothing.’

Girton offered Caroline unparalleled educational opportunities. ‘I was so privileged to be taught by Professor Marilyn Strathern and Dr Joan Oates. Having regular one-on-ones with an academic as celebrated as Marilyn is unforgettable and when I mention this to Anthropology colleagues now, they are in awe.’

After graduation, Caroline joined the museum world—initially with a nautical theme, as befits a rower. ‘I was volunteering at the Mary Rose museum as this ancient boat was raised from the English Channel. I then moved to an internship at the wonderful Museum of Mankind in London. Rooting around in the expansive cellars I developed my PhD idea among the museum fabrics and material culture.’

A long period abroad then began. ‘I didn’t come back for 20 years!’ And what years they were. ‘I spent some time in Communist Eastern Europe, living in Poland when I did my MA and visiting Romania under Ceausescu. I did my Anthropology PhD on the Thai–Laos border, living in a remote village and working with the Hmong minority group.’

The group enabled Caroline to revisit a previous skill; she must be the only Girtonian to have Liberty sell her batiks. ‘My PhD was on semiotics, image and ideology and, as I’d previously made and sold my own batik, I asked the Hmong women to teach me their batik and weaving skills, and they generously did so.’

She learnt much else besides. ‘Living in those villages over 18 months was one of the most challenging things I’ve done. Facilities were limited, and I learnt to do an entire body wash from one dog’s bowlful of water! But the isolation and intellectual demands were more testing.’

In 1987, Caroline moved to China and worked with the UN. The country was undergoing a dramatic period of change. ‘Beijing in 1987 was still a bicycle-dominated city. By the time I left in 1991 cars had taken over. During that time the events of Tiananmen Square took place and changed everything. It was a remarkable experience to be there and witness this historic moment.’

Her work took her all over the vast country. ‘I was working largely on the social aspects of agricultural development, all over remote areas, especially minority regions. Tibet had yet to see the enormous Chinese expansion into Lhasa, and on my first visit I was stunned and somewhat overwhelmed by this ancient city and its people’.

Then Caroline packed her bags once again and headed to Thailand to work for Save the Children. Her job took her throughout South East Asia, to Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar and back to China and Mongolia. ‘Mongolia was a lesson in how not to change an economy. Being the first, before Eastern Europe, to shake off the Soviet presence, they transited from a command economy to a privatised system which introduced huge inequalities and poverty. But the country is spellbinding, and still one of my favourite places. Sadly, the challenges of climate change are now taking their toll.’

Finally, in the late 1990s, Caroline returned to the UK to become Head of Research for Save The Children. She also took up a visiting fellowship at Manchester University, as an Associate Director of the Chronic Poverty Research Centre and as a Director of a linked research Centre on Childhood Poverty. ‘In 2001 I helped establish a longitudinal study of childhood poverty called Young Lives which is still running, the children now being almost 20 years old!’ Sixteen years ago, a research fellowship at the Overseas Development Institute led to Caroline’s current Directorship of the Institute’s Programme on gender equality and social inclusion.

‘A lot of my work is advising Governments, NGOs and the private sector. I’ve always worked in social justice and this is still as important in the UK as in any other country in the world.’ She is clear about her terms of reference. ‘It is not about interfering in people’s cultures, because abuses of human rights can never be defended with the excuse of “cultural traditions”’ Things in her field have altered, she acknowledges.

‘So-called “development” is pivoting to a more global understanding of change and “progress”. I work in partnership with researchers from around the world—in Africa and Asia, raising research money and working alongside them in trying to understand solutions to some of most pressing problems we face. In particular, I work on gender norms and at their root the oppressive systems of exploitative power—patriarchy and other systems of exclusion. I can see in retrospect how I was born into, and worked in, a post-colonial era, the dying embers of which are flickering out. Not, however, without leaving a damning legacy.’

Looking back on her career, Caroline says she has ‘had many highs and many lows. It’s less the positions I have held or the credentials to my name, though of course I am proud of them all, but rather the places, material cultures and people I have encountered around the world, and the collaborations that have evolved into mutual learning and friendships, that I value most. I have been privileged to work with many stellar public policy and academic researchers in multiple countries. As educators I feel we have strived together to make a difference. And I have never lost my love of creative arts and the museum world of artefacts, it’s something I come back to again and again.’

She feels that Cambridge is at the root of it all. ‘I recall the effort and sometimes pure struggle I put in, including overcoming failures, and though difficult, I really value those experiences. That effort started at Cambridge, with my academic pursuits and of course, my rowing.’

Yes, she still does it! ‘It’s a fitness I have never lost. I learnt to scull just five years ago. Now I row on the river Lea in London and every summer in Long Island USA, on the inland sea waters—gorgeous and such a good exercise for older joints!’

Girton, meanwhile, continues to occupy a special place in her heart. ‘I am hugely proud of the Girton feminist history— watching Blue Stockings—both at the Globe and later in the Girton grounds on the 150th anniversary was both sobering and inspirational. Girton and Cambridge made me aware of how women had to constantly achieve more than men to reach the same goals.’

It is a fight that of course still goes on, and to which Caroline remains committed. For the next generation too. ‘I was fabulously lucky to have my daughter late in life when I was 43. She has taught me so much about what is important. I would love to see my own work and effort bear fruit for her generation, but there will also be many fights to come and I will continue to play whatever part I can in making the world a fairer place.’