Bateson, Mary Catherine

Writer and cultural anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson was born in New York City in 1939, the daughter of anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. A Radcliffe graduate (B.A., 1960), she went on to earn her Ph. D. from Harvard in 1963. Bateson was on the faculties of Harvard University, Brandeis University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, among others, before retiring in 2004 from George Mason University from her position as Clarence J. Robinson Professor in Anthropology and English. She was president of the Institute for Intercultural Studies for thirty years until 2009, when the organization was dissolved. Bateson has written and co-authored many books and articles including: With a Daughter's Eye: A Memoir of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson (1984); Composing a Life (1989); Peripheral Visions: Learning Along the Way (1994); Willing to Learn: Passages of Personal Discovery (2004); and Composing a Further Life: The Age of Active Wisdom (2010).

Writer and cultural anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson was born in New York City in 1939, the daughter of anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. A Radcliffe graduate (B.A., 1960), she married J. Barkev Kassarjian in 1960 and earned her Ph.D. from Harvard in 1963. They have one daughter, Sevanne Margaret Kassarjian, born in 1969. Bateson was on the faculties of Harvard University, Brandeis University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, among others, before retiring in 2004 from George Mason University from her position as Clarence J. Robinson Professor in Anthropology and English. Bateson also served as Dean of Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Northern Iran and as Dean of the Faculty at Amherst College. She was president of the Institute for Intercultural Studies (IIS) for thirty years until 2009, when the organization was dissolved. Since 2006 she has been a Visiting Scholar at the Center on Aging & Work/Workplace Flexibility at Boston College and a consultant for the Lifelong Access Libraries Initiative of the Libraries for the Future. She is on multiple advisory boards including the National Center on Atmospheric Research and the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Bateson has written and co-authored many books and articles including: With a Daughter's Eye: A Memoir of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson (1984); Composing a Life (1989); Peripheral Visions: Learning Along the Way (1994); Willing to Learn: Passages of Personal Discovery (2004); and Composing a Further Life: The Age of Active Wisdom (2010).