Scholars on Friday discussed the anthropological work of Barack Obama's late mother, Stanley Ann Dunham.

The first such academic session was sponsored by the Women's Studies Department at the University of Hawai'i, where Dunham earned her doctorate and met Barack Obama Sr., father of the Democratic presidential nominee.

Dunham spent several years in Indonesia where she collected data for an 800-page doctoral dissertation on peasant blacksmithing.

She died of ovarian cancer in 1995.

Colleagues remembered Obama's mother as a kind, curious, hard-working and intelligent woman who respected everyone.

Hawai'i professor emeritus Alice Dewey was Dunham's graduate adviser in anthropology. She says Dunham "considered peasants just as important as people of high rank."