2012 – Richard Werbner (University of Manchester), “Divination’s Grasp: Reflexivity, Prosthetics, Perception”

2011 – Maria G. Cattell (Field Museum of Natural History), “Gender, Generation and Time in Sub-Saharan Africa”

2010 – J. Lorand Matory (Duke University), “Sacred Double Consciousness: The Signs of Citizenship and of Spirit Possession in the Afro-Atlantic World”

2009 – Karen Tranberg Hansen (Northwestern University), “Chiluba’s Trunks: Consumption, Excess, and the Dramaturgy of Power in Zambia”

2008 – Bennetta Jules-Rosette (University of Califronia, San Diego), “Innovation and Agency: Structures for Change in Africa and the African Diaspora”

2007 – Gwendolyn Mikell (Georgetown University), “Remembering Elliott P. Skinner: Looking Back and Moving Forward”

2006 – Bogumil Jewsiewicki (Université Laval), “Postscriptural Communication, Postphotographic Images, Performance as Heritage Preservation in Africa”

2005 – Gracia Clark (Indiana University), “Accountability and Authority in African Ethnography”

2004 – Mahir Saul (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), “Islam and West African Anthropology”

2003 – Betty Harris (Oklahoma University), “South Africa, Globalization, and Reconciliation: Renegotiating the Past, Building the Future”

2002 – Carolyn Martin Shaw (University of California at Santa Cruz), “Structures, Processes, Discourses, and Action: Changing Anthropology in Africa”

2001 – Parker Shipton (Boston University), “Blood, Soil, and Sovereignty in Tropical Africa”

2000 – John Ogbu (University of California at Berkeley), “Ways of Knowing”

1999 – Sally Falk Moore (Harvard University), “Skeptical Encounters with Development Discourse”

1998 – John Middleton (Yale University), “Studying Merchants”