Wenner-Gren Seminars: Call for Proposals

Deadline for submissions is April 1st 2023.

The Wenner-Gren Foundation seeks proposals for its new Seminar program.  Growing out of our longstanding Symposium program, Wenner-Gren Seminars are three-day events that bring together accomplished junior and senior scholars for conversations that contribute in a substantial way to addressing one or more of the Foundation’s strategic goals: advancing anthropological knowledge, increasing the impact of anthropology, addressing the precarity of anthropologists, and promoting a truly inclusive vision of the field.  Seminars provide junior and senior scholars and/or practitioners with an opportunity to expand their networks and to develop an in depth understanding of each other’s work in an intimate workshop setting.  Proposals must focus on a theme, a problem, or a research area likely to foster productive engagement across generational lines.  The Foundation will act as host for these meetings, help design the format and criteria for selection, and cover all costs.

Please send a letter of intent with a brief description of your proposed theme to dauston@wennergren.org.

Proposals should be roughly 2-3 pages and should give an overview of the purpose and vision of the meeting.

Submissions should address three key components:

• a brief explanation of the problem/questions at the heart of the proposal
• information about the academic organizers and an overview of the proposed meeting cohort (we do not expect the participant list to be finalized, but you should provide a general sense of the types of scholars you hope to have in the room, along with some possible names)
• a brief description of how you see these conversations making an intervention in the field, including a brief description of post-seminar plans (e.g. publications, multimedia resources, pedagogical tools, etc.)

In addition, proposals should include a project bibliography and a CV for each member of the organizing team.

For the list of possible participants, you should be aiming for an international cohort of scholars and practitioners with relevant expertise relating to the questions and issues that you hope to explore in the meeting. In selecting participants, you need not be limited to individuals working in academia. In addition to representing a broad range of geographic regions, you should also aim for inclusivity along other lines, curating a reasonable mix of scholars across career stages, race, gender identity, etc. We recommend that applicants try and think about the overall goals of the meeting and work from there to select individuals from the international scholarly community who would advance the conversation towards those aims.

Selection Criteria:

• How well does the proposed seminar address one or more of the Foundation’s strategic goals (advancing anthropological knowledge, amplifying the discipline’s impact, addressing the precarity of anthropologists, and fostering an inclusive vision of the field)?
• To what degree will the proposed seminar change the conversation within anthropology?
• How effective will this theme be in sparking an intergenerational engagement? How will an intergenerational engagement move forward thinking on this theme?
• To what degree will the proposed seminar bring together scholars who otherwise might not be in conversation?
• Have the proposers come up with an effective and appropriate plan for selecting participants and structuring the meeting?
• What impact will this seminar make on the discipline? Have the proposers come up with an effective and appropriate plan for ensuring that the seminar has an afterlife?

The organizers could be independent scholars and not technically faculty.