Francis Edgar Williams

Francis Edgar Williams studied at Oriel College, University of Adelaide and Balliol College. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is anthropology. Works named in the authority record are Orokaiva Magic and Orokaiva Society. Work by Francis Edgar Williams is recorded in the collections of Papers of the Murray Family. Distinctions recorded are Rhodes Scholarship.

Born in Malvern, South Australia and educated at Kyre College, the Baptist South Australia school, Williams graduated from the University of Adelaide in 1914 with high honours, and was accordingly awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study at the University of Oxford. He nevertheless decided to join the Australian Imperial Force in 1915 and served in France as a lieutenant in the 32nd Battalion. Promoted to the honorary rank of captain in early 1918, he served in a secret mission in Caucasus under General Lionel Dunsterville. In 1919, he took up his Rhodes Scholarship at Balliol, and graduated in anthropology in 1921.

Back in Australia at the end of the year, he met in February 1922 the Lieutenant-Governor of Papua, Hubert Murray, who was looking for a young and strong Oxford graduate to serve as an assistant government anthropologist next to Dr William Mersh Strong, more a practitioner than a scientist. Appointed on 8 March 1922, Williams was promoted to Government Anthropologist when Strong retired in 1928, and kept the position until the demise of the Papuan administration in 1942. He married Constance Laura Dennis, a kindergarten teacher from Vancouver, in December 1926. She stayed with Williams in Papuan, assisting him with his reports and field notes. Their son Francis, but known as Jack, was born in Canada in 1927. Due to a brain tumor found in infancy leading to him becoming almost sightless Jack was sent to a school for the blind in England, with Constance frequently spending time there with him. Williams was one of the few anthropologists of his time able to spend two continuous decades in the same location without having to regularly return to a metropolitan university or institution. Of the nineteen years spent in Papua more than five of those he lived in Papuan villages. His fieldwork consisted of seven major studies: Vailala (Purari Delta); Orokaiva (Northern Division); Keraki (Morehead River); Koiari (Central Division); Elena (Gulf Division); Foi (Lake Kutubu), and Keveri (Eastern Division) in addition to smaller field studies in about a dozen other societies. While in the field Williams did many of the standard tasks of anthropologists at the time he differed from his peers by revisiting field sites many times over years. This frequent exposure to the Papuan culture led his work to be far more realistic than the often romanticized fieldwork and subjects of his contemporaries. During those twenty years of heavy field work, Williams published many books and articles, both monographic and general. His writing style was described as "clear, candid, unpretentious, and at times wryly self-deprecating." In addition to his reports Williams founded and edited The Papuan Villager (1929-42), a monthly newspaper in simple English that became a vehicle for colonial propaganda. His criticism of Functionalism came forward in his writing, creating a divide between himself and many of his peers.

When World War II expanded to the Southern Pacific in December 1941, Williams came back to Australia and enlisted as a lieutenant to serve with military intelligence. He was promoted captain in November 1942. Among his many works, he wrote You and Native, a booklet advising the Allied soldiers on how to behave with Papuans. In early 1943, Williams was sent back to Papua to serve as a liaison officer with the Australian New Guinea Administrative Unit. On 12 May, he died in a plane crash on the Owen Stanley Range, 20 km south of Kokoda. He was buried in a military cemetery at Bomana.

Francis Edgar Williams is recorded as anthropologist and photographer.