Martha Ann Chowning (18 April 1929 – 25 September 2016) was an American anthropologist, ethnographer, archaeologist and linguist known for her work on the peoples, languages, cultures and histories of Oceania.
There she was taught by Ward Goodenough, who engaged her in a project on the Lakalai people of Papua New Guinea.
After finishing her PhD in 1957, Chowning subsequently revisited the Lakalai many times between the 1960s and 1990s, and carried out comparative fieldwork on Molima, Sengseng, and Kove.
[1][2] Chowning held an assistant professorship in anthropology at Barnard College, Columbia University, from 1960 to 1965, and was Senior Research Fellow in social anthropology at the Australian National University from 1965 to 1970.
[3] Chowning was awarded an Honorary Life Membership of the Association of Social Anthropologists of Aotearoa/New Zealand (ASAA/NZ).