Conversations that move us forward

while piecing together the human experience

Each semester, we organize panel discussions and lecture series focused on current themes of anthropological research featuring the research of early career scholars.

Emerging Scholars Events

Boston University Department of Anthropology
Emerging Scholars Program

Ethnographic Insights: New Perspectives on Gender, Marriage, & Family

Boston University’s Department of Anthropology is pleased to have hosted an Emerging Scholars program on the topic: Ethnographic Insights: New Perspectives on Gender, Marriage, & Family. This Emerging Scholars program focused on bringing together some of the most promising young scholars from groups that have historically been underrepresented in the academy and who are working in the intersecting fields of anthropology, women’s, sexuality, and gender studies, queer studies, and ethnic/area studies, with the aim of both deepening our networks with scholars from these groups and providing a platform for engagement between these scholars and our diverse graduate student body; providing multiple opportunities for connection between the invited scholars and our students through presentations and engagement with a related graduate course throughout spring semester 2024 (AN 701: Cross-Cutting Perspectives in the Anthropology of Marriage & Family); and forging an interdisciplinary dialogue around these themes across specializations within Anthropology (sociocultural, biological, and archaeological) and other departments and programs at Boston University and among faculty with research expertise at the intersections of gender and sexuality studies, critical race and ethnic studies, and indigenous studies. We are especially interested in identifying cutting edge forms of inquiry emerging in the fields of anthropology and gender studies based on ethnographic insights that push our thinking about gender, marriage, intimate relationships, and family formation.

This program provided emerging scholars with the opportunity to showcase their work and develop collegial relationships with each other and with graduate students and faculty who share their interests.

     

     

     

    Interrogating Our Origins: Decolonizing the Narrative of Human Evolution

    This is a transformative time in paleoanthropological research. New technologies, such as remote sensing, have led to the discovery of an explosion of new fossil hominin sites. Rather than making our understanding of human evolution easier, these new discoveries reveal the complicated history of human evolution. Many of these advances and insights have been driven by the entry of more diverse voices into the field. Asking new questions that challenge pre-existing paradigms and assumptions, these scholars have brought fresh light to age old questions of what drove human evolution. This Emerging Scholars program helped to celebrate and further foster these exciting new research perspectives.