"The purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe for human differences." – Ruth Benedict
We are excited to announce the next webinar sponsored by the Society of Black Archaeologists, Indigenous Archaeology Collective, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Cornell Institute of Archaeology and Material Studies, and SAPIENS, Unsettling the Past: Radically Reimagining Archaeological Knowledge. The webinar will be held on January 13, 2021 from 4-6 pm EST and is sponsored by the Stanford Archaeology Center. You can register for the event here.
In 2019, the Wenner-Gren Foundation piloted the Wadsworth Institutional Grant in the Department of Anthropology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, based in the National Museum of Brazil, the site of a devastating fire. At a time when Brazil’s right-wing government has slashed budgets for academic research, this new program provides pilot funding and training in grant writing to doctoral students, who in the future will be increasingly dependent on international sources of support.
From September to November the Wenner-Gren Foundation sponsored a new webinar series entitled, “Indigenous Peoples, Heritage and Landscape in the Asia Pacific: Knowledge Co-Production, Policy Change, and Empowerment“, co-sponsored by UCLA Asia Pacific Center, the UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, The University of New England through the First Peoples Rights and Law Centre, and the National Cheng-chi University through the Center for Taiwan-Philippines Indigenous Knowledge, Local Knowledge, and Sustainable Studies (CTPILS).
Watch the entire series here.
On October 23rd the UC Irvine School of Social Sciences in partnership with the Wenner-Gren Foundation kicked off the first installment of the webinar series: “Criticism Inside, Alternatives Alongside: Organizing Otherwise to Intervene in Anthropology’s Future“. An archive of the first episode, “Introducing the Series: Theory and Practice at the Edges of Academia” can be seen here.
On November 9th the New York Academy of Sciences hosted the lecture, “What Is the Utility of Anthropology in This Moment of Emergency?” Watch it now.
In response to urgent calls to address systemic racism in all spheres of institutional life, a group of archaeology centers based in the United States have come together to identify avenues for concrete change. Since July, center directors and representatives have been meeting via Zoom to consider ways to move archaeology forward towards greater diversity, equity, and inclusion.
