'Migration in, from, and to Southeastern Europe: Intercultural Communication, Social Changes, and Transnational Ties'
May 21-24, 2009, Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey
Organizers: Asker Kartari (Hacettepe University) and Ulf Brunnbauer (University of Regensburg)

This was the 5th Conference of the International Association for Southeast European Anthropology -- the first international association of academics and researchers in the social sciences who concentrate on Southeast Europe.

'Images without Borders'
May 4-8, 2008, School for Advanced Research, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Organizers: Dr. John W. Kantner (School for Advanced Research) in collaboration with Dr. Mary M. Steedly (Harvard University)

The proliferation and rapid circulation of visual images around the globe has transformed our understanding and experience of public space. How might we tell the life histories of those images and their audiences? What is the relationship between technologies of image production and dissemination, and what kinds of publics crystallize around those technologies?

Geo-environmental conditions may have triggered migrations at various times in the last 3 million years ago. Physical human factors and the environment can also trigger movement both at local and continental scale. Ecology and behaviour of a dispersing species becomes more variable as novel environments are settled and no close competitors are encountered. Adaptability, key factor to an organism's ability to endure change, thrive and spread to new environments rather than climatic shift and expansion of grasslands may explain success of early Homo in its novel environments.

'Genomics and African Society: The Future Health of Africa,' March 26-28, 2004, Cairo, Egypt -- Organizer: Wilmot G. James (Human Sciences Research Council, Cape Town, South Africa). Archaeologists, physical anthropologists, geneticists, linguists, and historians with an interest in the long-term history of African people met in Cairo in March 2004 to debate the implications of recent genetic advances for their disciplines. These paleoscientists found much in common but reported many difficulties in probing the meanings of each other's texts and diagrams.

'Towards an Anthropology of Hope? Comparative Post-Yugoslav Ethnographies,'
November 9-11, 2007, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
Organizers: Dr. Stefaan Jansen (University of Manchester) and Dr. Elissa L. Helms (Central European University - Budapest)

This workshop was the first opportunity for a new wave of anthropologists working on the post-Yugoslav states - both 'insiders' and 'outsiders' -- to engage in a collective agenda-setting exercise on the comparative basis of their own ethnographic work. Its objective was two-fold.

Preliminary Abstract: This conference will provide a bridge of knowledge that will begin to fill gaps in our current understanding of the magnitude of genetic diversity in Africa and the Americas, its evolutionary and demographic origins, biocultural and ecological context, geographical distributions, and biomedical significance. The conference will provide data on African genetic variants, the presence of African genetics in the Americas, and evidence for new genetic configurations.