Cirrus@Austlit

Camilla Wedgwood was a member of the famous Wedgwood china and pottery family. She was the fifth of seven children of Josiah Clement Wedgwood, a naval architect, and his wife Ethel Kate. After attending the Orme Girls' School, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, Camilla went to Bedales School in Hampshire. At seventeen she entered Bedford College for Women, University of London. In 1920 she attended Newnham College, Cambridge, where she studied anthropology.

Wedgwood moved to Australia to take up a position with the Department of Anthropology at Sydney University, the first woman in that department and one of only three women lecturers at the university at that time. She was principal of the Women's College between 1935 and 1943. Wedgwood conducted pioneering anthropological fieldwork in Papua New Guinea and promoted education in developing countries.

[For more details: David Wetherell, 'Wedgwood Camilla Hildegarde (1901 - 1955)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 16, Melbourne University Press, 2002, pp 515-517.]