Highlighting Recent Global Initiatives Grant Recipients
In the 2023 competition for Global Initiatives Grants, we prioritized collaborations focused on professional ethics. Here are the projects we ended up supporting:
Krishnan, Shweta and Dana Burton (George Washington U.) “Collaboration as Care: Empowering Anthropologists in Their Ethical Responsibilities”
This project is aimed at addressing precarity and helping early career scholars respond to increased expectations and demands. Drawing on feminist, queer, BIPOC, decolonial, multispecies, and medical anthropological theories, the co-applicants’ Professional Development Program aims to collectively identify methods for nurturing the self-care needed to fulfill research, teaching and service obligations. Plans involve a collaboration between 60 participants and encompass two phases. The first, to develop self-care resources, and the second to hold virtual workshops and seminars over a 6-month period to share knowledge and form peer support networks as it builds new skills to foster care.
Bhandari, Riddhi (O.P. Jindal Global U.) and Siddhi Bhandari (Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design And Technology), India “Towards a Pedagogy of Care–Capacity Building in Indian Higher-Education Academia for Ethical and Inclusive Pedagogical Framework”
The co-applicants of this project, an anthropologist and a sociologist, both share deep ties to Indian higher education. This project grows out of concerns and challenges expressed by an increasing number of interdisciplinary faculty based at private and public Indian universities who are impacted by the neoliberal turn in Indian education. This trend promotes “innovative pedagogy,” a practice that treats students as consumers and markets education as “consumer-oriented deliverables of grades, skill-sets, and experience.”
In a context like India where there is no formal association of anthropologists and sociologists, the purpose of this initiative is to bring stakeholders (students, faculty, and university administration) into conversation to discuss collective concerns, propose alternative models of teaching and petition for adopting a “pedagogy of care” approach. Envisioned as a model whereby care and empathy extend beyond students, it includes faculty who likely face precarious positions and overburdened workloads that leave little time for fulfilling research and publications demands.
Goldberg, Katherine and Alison McLetchie (South Carolina, U. of) “Increasing Equitable Access to Archaeological Training, Resources, and Education”
During a time when courses in archaeology are no longer being offered at Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Community Colleges in South Carolina, this 3-year project aims to increase diversity among students enrolled in graduate programs by exposing undergraduate students of color to fieldwork experience. Building on a pilot program launched by Dr. Alison McLetchie, the project covers the cost of housing and a per diem for students attending a weeklong field school at a state park over spring break. The project’s collaborative partnership includes faculty from South Carolina State University, the University of South Carolina Anthropology, and the South Carolina Institute for Archaeology and Anthropology and personnel from the South Carolina State Parks Department. Together, they coordinate lodging and transportation, recruit students, arrange for academic credit, and create a curriculum. Besides its value for outreach to students of color, the timing coincides with the opening of the International African American Museum in Charleston. The potential of this project for raising public awareness about “historic preservation, public heritage management, and helping local descendant communities form connections to the past” is clear.
Lobo, Andréa (Brasilia, U. of) and Antonio Carlos de Souza Lima (Editor of Vibrant), Brazil “A Vibrant Project: Publishing Indigenous and Black Brazilian Anthropologists in Foreign Languages”
Co-editors of the Brazilian journal Vibrant will use project funds to translate and publish the works of 10 Black and 10 Indigenous Brazilian anthropologists in English. Funds that are available to the journal do not support translation and the goal is to make this scholarship accessible to international audiences and open international channels of dialogue.
Despite affirmative action policies in Brazil that are meant to support historically marginalized black and indigenous scholars and mitigate inequalities in the discipline, it is clear that more needs to be done to level the playing field. This initiative closely aligns with the Foundation’s mission to “advance anthropological knowledge, build sustainable careers, and amplify the impact of anthropology within the wider world … by broadening the conversation in anthropology to reflect the full diversity of the field.”
Stein, Felix (Oslo, U. of) “The Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology (OEA)”
This project supports the transition of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology from the University of Cambridge to Open Knowledge Press, a publishing NGO. Based in Europe, the Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology (OEA)’s peer-reviewed, jargon-free entries make them appealing to the public and accessible to readers beyond the discipline. Its editors and advisory board include a broad international mix, one third of readers are based in non-high-income countries, and emerging scholars from the global South are welcome to submit free of charge. What makes this project especially enticing is the grantee’s commitment to advancing the open-access movement by actively sharing organizational and financial information with other open access publishers.