Anthropology News

Credit: Derek Montgomery Dr. Wayne Warry, 1953-2026. Dr. Wayne Warry, distinguished medical anthropologist and pioneer in Indigenous and rural health research, passed away on August 4, 2026, leaving behind an enduring legacy of community-engaged scholarship, health-equity advocacy, and dedicated mentorship across Canada and the United States.  Dr. Warry earned his BA (1975) and MA (1976) from McMaster University before comp

When I, as a new graduate student, first walked into Renato’s office in Fall 1983, I could not help noticing that it was full of cardboard boxes with file folders and books. I did not know it at the time, but the boxes were a manifestation of Renato’s rebirth as he engaged academics after a tragic loss. Renato invited me to read through the materials in the boxes that would form the basis of an article for the Annual Review of Anthropology on the history of Chicana and Chicano anthropology. I di

Hitesh was twenty years old when he received a thick envelope at his door in a western Indian city. It was not like the official kinds from the bank but looked like a long letter from an old friend. He checked the address, the postcode, the house number. All his. But something was unfamiliar on the cover—the name to which it was addressed. “Madhavi.” Who was Madhavi? Hitesh tried to return the envelope to the postman but the right address was all that mattered to the official—the name on the cov

Editor’s Note: This piece is the third in SAFN’s 2026 Anthropology News series on Temporality in Food Anthropology. If you haven’t already, check out the previous installments by Janita Van Dyk, and by Janet Chrzan. Orders-In Nico and I have been standing awkwardly in the kitchen for what feels like an eternity. This is the first time I’m joining him for a day of work at Pseudoughnym, a mom-and-pop pizzeria slinging New-York-style pizzas out of a warehouse tucked betwee

I am a PhD student who studies language, culture, and processes of youth marginalization and belonging in London schools. In this article, I reflect on how ethnographic methods have shaped my engagement with grassroots education networks, drawing on two summers of preliminary linguistic ethnographic fieldwork in East London from 2024-2026. Before turning to research, I spent twelve years as an educator, activist, and youth ally in and around U.S. schools—a background that attuned me to the role

My “news” is at least two-hundred-years old. However, as current news can only mean something in relation to context and history, we can use my old news to place the recent attack on Anthropology in the “Vanderbilt Report” within a longer historical arc. Looking squarely at the early formation of anthropology one must admit that there is no golden age to return to in which scholars produced knowledge without consideration of their own or their interlocutor’s differential positions and conditions

La Ruan said he was destined to live a lonely life. It would be better, he told me, to find a wife, secure companionship, and perhaps raise children. During my visits to his hometown, we spent long afternoons talking in his adobe house at the center of a Mixtec community nestled in a valley of green mountains. One day, I finally asked him about love. “Love does not exist for people like us,” he said. Then he added: “Es un ratito” (It is a little while). I met La Ruan while conducting resea

In 2021, the BBC News released a video about a Chinese father making medicines at home to save his son. The father, Xu Wei, was around 30 years old, living in southwestern China. In 2020, his nine-month-old son had been diagnosed with Menkes syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that prevents the body from absorbing copper. Doctors told him there was no cure and his child would not live past three. The only drug known to temporarily ease symptoms, copper histidine, was unavailable in China

We write at a moment when the violence of war is reverberating across regions, institutions, and everyday life. Ongoing wars in the Middle East have laid bare the genocidal tendencies of both global and regional powers. In Gaza, Israel’s ongoing assault—enabled and sustained by Western military and financial support—has involved the systematic destruction of the conditions of life, forcing us to confront a genocide unfolding before our eyes. At the same time, escalating attacks against Iran expo

Across the country, anthropology is under threat—a target of budget crunches and institutional restructuring sweeping through higher ed as well as broader attacks on the social sciences, humanities, and DEI. In response, the American Anthropological Association, through its Anthropology Advocacy Council (AAC), developed Anthropology Watch: a tracker documenting every closure, cut, and admissions freeze as it happens. Below is an interview with AAC co-chairs Jeff Maskovsky and Emily Metzner ab

The annual Louise Lamphere Internship Program offers two interns the chance to spend six weeks in Washington, DC, splitting their time between the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and either the Alexandria Archaeology Museum or the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage (CFCH). In this piece, they recount their invaluable time as Louise Lamphere interns, reflecting on what they learned from their experiences at the AAA and their respective field sites.

Boom bap-bap boom-bap.  The batucada drums struck our ears, pulling us into the room. Around 80 people packed into a patio in Bogotá, gathered for the rough-cut screening of a short film, Entre Luz, built from the testimonies of youth protesters who had lost their eyes to police bullets during Colombia’s 2021 national strike. The drumming, a style born in Brazilian streets, has since led millions in dozens of protests across Latin America. Credi

Curated Collections highlight articles published in the last decade from our AnthroSource archives that speak to urgent issues in the present, offering insight into current events unfolding around the globe. From movements for racial justice and Indigenous sovereignty to the social implications of climate change, technological transformation, war, migration, and public health, these contributions demonstrate anthropology’s enduring relevance and responsibilities. This collection highlights wo

(1945–2026) Susan Makiesky Barrow was a social anthropologist and Caribbeanist, who built on that foundation during a 45-year career as a research scientist and senior lecturer in which she explored the intersections of gender, migration and racial consciousness, and social epidemiology, urban policy studies, and homelessness. Born in Nebraska in 1945, she received her BA in English from New York University (NYU) in 1967 and her PhD in anthropology from Brandeis University in 1976. As an unde

(1923–2024) Dr. Hazel Hitson Weidman was a founder of the Society for Medical Anthropology (SMA) in 1971 and editor of its first newsletter, now Medical Anthropology Quarterly (Weidman 1986). Her work refined cross-cultural community research methods, advancing theoretical concepts of transcultural medicine, health culture, culturally appropriate care, the culture-broker role, and the professionalization of clinical anthropology.  In the book Culture in the Clinic, medical historian Cath

After two decades of expansion, China’s real estate economy slumped into a prolonged recession. Beginning from 2020, small and big developers, trapped in debt accumulated over the previous aggressive cycles of profit accumulation, abandoned works on ongoing housing projects, leaving hundreds of apartment buildings unfinished. Most apartments in the abandoned projects were already sold through home presales, and a significant number had been sold to migrant families buying their first h

The 25th anniversary of the Society for East Asian Anthropology (SEAA) this year offers an occasion to take a longer view on anthropological research and the historical record at a moment when both have come under increasingly complex pressures. This essay grows out of a set of overlapping intellectual commitments that have taken shape over time. As an anthropologist who has been on the faculty of a history department for nearly twenty years, now with a joint appointment in anthropology, I have

A year and a half into the COVID-19 pandemic, and a year into my fieldwork in Sheet’ká (Sitka, Alaska), I spoke with Lorena about COVID-19, vaccination, and public health policy. Lorena, a pseudonym for a Tlingit elder, was worried about the virus. But perhaps she was more worried about how the longer histories of settler infectious disease management shaped and might continue to shape Indigenous life. Wondering aloud about the pandemic and its governance, Lorena mused, “Is this a

Dr. Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy, a cultural anthropologist, social activist, and scholar of women’s and queer studies, died on May 23, 2026, at the age of 86 after struggles with Parkinson’s. Bobbi Prebis, labor activist and her partner of 50 years, pre-deceased her by several months. Liz was a brilliant, generous, and lively thinker who enjoyed the generative spaces of working with others. She was gifted at bringing people together and fostering curiosity and growth; she was the beloved mentor t

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