Linvill F. and Avra G. Watson were a husband and wife team of anthropologists whose research and academic interests often overlapped. Dr. Linvill F. Watson was born in Philadelphia in 1918. He attended the University of Pennsylvania earning an A.B. in 1938 and a PhD. in 1953 (dissertation: "Northern Ibo Social Stratification and Acculturation"). Dr. L.F. Watson held several academic positions before joining the University of Saskatchewan in 1966, including several years with both the University of Maryland Overseas Program and Lafayette College. At the University of Saskatchewan, he started in the Department of Sociology in 1966; was cross-appointed to the Department of Sociology and the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology from 1970 to 1980 (continuing as an Associate Member in Sociology until 1982); and remained in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology until his retirement as a full professor in 1986. His fields of expertise included African culture and the Canadian North. He died in Saskatoon in 1996.

Dr. Avra G. Watson was born in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1922. She earned a B.A. (1945) and an M.A. (1949) from Boston University. In 1976, she completed her PhD. in Anthropology from the University of Pittsburgh when she submitted the thesis “Melanesian Cargo Movements: A Developmental Analysis.” Her first appointment at the University of Saskatchewan was in 1966 as a Research Associate with the College of Commerce’s Canadian Centre for Community Studies. From 1967 until 1970, she was an Assistant Professor (hired as a Cultural Anthropologist) in the Department of Educational Foundations. In the mid 1980s, she was a sessional lecturer in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology. Dr. Avra G. Watson’s academic interests included social change and movements, anthropology and education, women’s studies, Latin America, urban anthropology and Canadian society and culture.