American anthropologist from New York who studied the Okanagan people of Washington (1930) and the Tillamook of Oregon (1931). In 1933 she received a fellowship from the National Research Council and studied the Chiga of Uganda, the first American woman anthropologist to live in an African village. Her studies included tribal horticultural systems. After her return from Africa (1934), she married the philosopher Abraham Edel. Together they published on anthropology and ethics, in particular on morality as an independent area of anthroplogical study. She taught anthropology at Brooklyn College in New York until 1941, but was blacklisted from teaching because of her political activism and left to raise a family. She undertook a cultural study of Brownsville, a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York during 1947. May Edel began teaching again in 1956 and was latterly assistant professor of anthropology (1960-1964) in Newark College of Arts and Sciences of Rutgers University.