Sylvia Marguerite Broadbent

Background

Broadbent was born in London.

Education

Broadbent graduated from Carmel High School in 1948 at the age of 16.

Career

She emigrated with her family in the wake of World World War II to Carmel, California in 1947. Broadbent began teaching at Northwestern University for Spring Semester 1961 followed by Barnard College that fall. She joined the faculty of Universidad de Los Andes in the Fall of 1964 to focus on the Chibcha culture native to Colombia.

She began teaching at University of California, Riverside (UCR) in 1966 and was promoted to full professor in 1972.

She eventually retired as chair of the anthropology department. Her papers are archived with the special collections department at UCR. UCR offers a fellowship for anthropology graduate students in her name.

ISSN 0068-6484. (co-authored with Lucy Shepard Freeland).

Achievements

• She went on to win a Genevieve McEnerny fellowship and receive her Bachelor"s degree in Anthropology (with highest honors) in 1952. In 1981 she wrote The Formation of Peasant Society in Central Colombia for which she was awarded the American Society for Ethnohistory"s 1983 Robert F. Heizer prize.

Membership

Broadbent, a member of the Sierra Club, was party to a lawsuit against the Bureau of Land Management to restrict the use of vehicles in the California desert.