Public Anthropology at Wenner-Gren

When SAPIENS launched nearly a decade ago, it marked a major commitment by the Wenner-Gren Foundation to public anthropology—to the idea that anthropological knowledge should circulate widely, speak beyond disciplinary boundaries, and matter in public life.

With the magazine now sunsetted, a natural question follows: what happens next?

The answer is not a simple replacement for SAPIENS. Instead, the Foundation is moving toward something broader and bigger: integrating public anthropology into its grants, fellowships, media initiatives, and institutional practices. Over the past few months, the Wenner-Gren staff has been devoted to developing a coordinated set of strategies to bring public impact more fully into the center of the Foundation’s work.

This direction aligns closely with our mission: advancing anthropological knowledge, amplifying its impact, nurturing anthropology as a career, and fostering inclusive conversations across differences. Public anthropology is not an add-on to that mission. It can be at the heart of fulfilling it. Especially at a moment when expertise is contested, misinformation circulates rapidly, and inclusive dialogue is harder, and yet more necessary, than ever.

Rather than existing as a single platform, public anthropology at Wenner-Gren is a central value, part of the path to follow our north star: supporting anthropology worldwide.

From Platform to Practice

One of the most significant changes underway involves our grant programs.

From 2026–2030, the Global Initiatives Grant will give priority to innovative projects in public anthropology designed to reach broad, general audiences. Applicants may draw on any combination of anthropological tools, theories, and methods to share disciplinary knowledge in ways that are accessible, pioneering, and socially consequential.

Competitive proposals might include a social media campaign addressing misinformation, racism, health inequities, or water insecurity; curriculum partnerships for K–12 educators incorporating anthropological thinking; training programs to help scholars master media and public speaking; or applied anthropology incubators designed to inform public policy. Some initiatives may be short-term, high-impact interventions responding to emerging crises. Others may seek to build lasting infrastructure capable of sustaining public engagement well beyond the grant itself.

The aim is simple but ambitious: to expand anthropology’s footprint by creating new platforms for public communication while building the skills scholars need to reach non-academic audiences.

At the same time, we are evaluating all of our application materials to consider how best to integrate an “impact” question across Wenner-Gren’s many programs. In some cases, such as the Engaged Research Grants, proposals are already viewed through a public anthropology lens. In other cases, there is more need to invite applicants to articulate a project’s possible impacts beyond the discipline more clearly. Moving forward, applicants across the Foundation’s programs will be asked not only what knowledge they hope to produce, but also whom they hope to reach, how they plan to reach them, and why their work matters in the world today.

This is not about prescribing a single model of engagement. Anthropology’s publics are as diverse as our theories and methods. Local communities, educators, policymakers, artists, students, journalists, general readers, and more, are just some of the nonacademic audiences invested in our work. The goal is simply to make public engagement visible as part of intentional scholarly design rather than an afterthought. In this sense, public anthropology becomes less a special initiative and more a shared responsibility across the Foundation’s portfolio—and the discipline more broadly.

Rethinking Media

Another strand of this work involves reconsidering how anthropology circulates through media.

The Fejos Postdoctoral Fellowship in Ethnographic Film has been reconceived as the Fejos Postdoctoral Fellowship to reflect a broader commitment to public media in all its forms. Early career scholars often lack the time and resources to tell anthropological stories in registers other than print. Through this program, we support early career doctorates whose projects amplify the reach of anthropology through filmmaking, audio production, and other creative multimodal work.

Alongside production, we are placing greater emphasis on distribution, asking how funded projects will actually reach audiences and sustain engagement over time.

We are also exploring ways to increase access to the rich history of media supported by the Foundation, including the possibility of a public-facing library highlighting films and related projects supported through the Fejos program. Over the past decade, we have learned that strong storytelling is only part of the equation. The work also needs durable pathways, places where audiences can encounter it, return to it, share it.

Building Spaces for Conversation and Craft

Public anthropology has always depended on conversation as much as publication. Many anthropologists want their work to reach wider audiences, but few receive formal training in how to do so. Craft, mentorship, and community matter.

Later this year, the Foundation is convening an online Forum on what our current moment demands of public anthropology. We are inviting anthropologists working across subfields, career stages, and public arenas to reflect on questions such as: What should public anthropology aim to accomplish now? Who is it for? And what strategies will allow anthropological knowledge to matter in the years ahead? The goal is not to dictate a single direction, but to open a structured dialogue about purpose, audience, and responsibility at a time of rapid political and media transformation.

Beginning in 2026, Wenner-Gren will also launch a pilot week-long residential writing workshop at the School for Advanced Research (SAR) in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This program is designed to help anthropologists strengthen their craft so they can reach broad public audiences. Participation will be limited to a small cohort of 6–8 scholars drawn from recent Hunt Postdoctoral Fellows, Fellows in the Anthropology of Black Experiences, and SAR Fellows.

The workshop will focus intensively on voice, narrative structure, audience awareness, and the practical challenges of translating research into compelling public writing. Led by anthropologist and poet Nomi Stone and nonfiction writer and journalist Ro Skelton of Field Studio, the program will include a week-long residential component followed by structured Zoom sessions over six months. This is an extended mentorship process designed to move book projects forward.

We are also providing support to the American Anthropological Association for its AAA Op-Ed Project, which trains anthropologists to write timely, persuasive opinion pieces for major media outlets. The program provides coaching, pitch development, and strategic guidance to help scholars translate research into public arguments. Their participants have been hugely successful, publishing in Science, Newsweek, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, Times of India, and many more preeminent publications. By supporting this initiative, we aim to help more anthropologists enter public debates with clarity and confidence.

Finally, we are turning attention to how Wenner-Gren itself tells stories about anthropology.

Over the coming year, the Foundation will develop a dedicated public anthropology section of its website, conduct a broader review of our digital storytelling practices, and strengthen how grantee work is presented and celebrated online. This includes clearer thematic framing, more accessible narratives about our past grantees, and better tools on our website for discovering past and current projects.

Continuing the Commitment

The sunset of SAPIENS marks the end of an important chapter. It also clarifies something that has been developing for years: public anthropology at Wenner-Gren was never meant to reside in one project alone.

Indeed, by incorporating the values of public anthropology into all our programs—including our research grants, which is the Foundation’s largest area of investment—we are providing institutional support and endorsement for scholars committed to working in the public sphere, especially when it is the only ethical way to do their work. Particularly for those in academia seeking tenure, when public anthropology becomes embedded in funding and other Foundation-driven opportunities, promotion committees find it harder to dismiss.And so, today, our commitment to the field’s public impact extends across funding priorities, fellowship design, media initiatives, training programs, partnerships, and digital platforms. The work ahead is incremental—editing application language, convening committees, launching workshops, building partnerships—but collectively it represents a major shift.

Supporting anthropology worldwide. Helping anthropology matter in the world beyond it.