Opening Lecture of the PhD Programme in Anthropology 2025/2026 with anthropologist Sarah Meltzoff

The Opening Lecture of the 2025/2026 academic year of the PhD Programme in Anthropology, Department of Life Sciences of the University of Coimbra, took place last Friday, October 10. The event featured Sarah Meltzoff, an American anthropologist and Professor Emerita of Marine Ecosystems and Society at the University of Miami, who delivered a talk entitled “Dolphin Hunters or Dolphin Saviors as Cultural Identity Shifts in the Solomon Islands.”

A specialist in coastal cultures, Sarah Meltzoff has conducted ethnographic research in diverse regions, from the Solomon Islands and Spain to the Galápagos and Chile. She first lived among the Lau people of Small Malaita, Solomon Islands, in 1973, participating in their traditional dolphin hunt. Over the following three decades, she observed the transformation of their island world with the arrival of “civilization”—the English pidgin term for industrialized society.

In the past decade, Meltzoff has been actively engaged in local efforts to end dolphin hunting, as part of a broader cultural transformation. Her Opening Lecture, held at the Colégio de São Bento, revisited this decades-long ethnographic experience, showing how the attitudes of Solomon Islanders toward dolphin hunting are changing under the influence of social media and globalization.