The Department of Anthropology and Sociology was one of the first three departments established in the Research School of Pacific Studies by the Interim Council in 1949. Dr Siegfried Frederick Stephen Nadel was appointed founding Chair and Professor of Anthropology and Sociology in August 1950. Through the scholarships scheme of the Interim Council ethnographic field research was already underway in 1949 and early 1950 by scholars working in New Guinea, the Tobriands Group in Fiji, and in Tonga. The Department was designed to meet the need for theoretical research, concerned with the principles and methods of anthropology, combined with specialised research in particular areas of the Pacific. The broad research interests of the Department were also intended for the training of research workers and to extend to the study of modern society. Other heads of Anthropology included Professor William Edward Hanley Stanner, who was an early member of the Department (Reader in Social Anthropology 1949-1964; Professor 1964-1970) and Professor Roger M Keesing (Chair 1974-1990) who worked extensively with Indigenous Australians and in the Solomon Islands respectively.