Gregory Acciaioli

The 2018 biennial conference of the World Council of Anthropological Associations (WCAA) will assess the contemporary global range of anthropological activities, including such foci as: the articulation of applied and academic anthropology; the institutional distribution of anthropologists’ employment; the local, regional and global challenges addressed by diverse forms of anthropological engagement; and the teaching of anthropology in non-university contexts. WCAA delegates representing member associations will present papers based upon research they have conducted to explore the parameters of anthropological practice among their constituencies in each nation-state and region they represent, as well as drawing upon the results of a common survey instrument designed and administered by the WCAA. This conference seeks through these facet of this Global Survey of Anthropological Practice to investigate how anthropologists are confronting such issues as precarity across a range of work places and the populist backlash against policies of multiculturalism, accommodation of migrants and other aspects of globalisation by examining what anthropologists across diverse settings are doing and contributing both within the academy and in applied occupations and thus address how ‘scientific research and scholarship can be, has been or will be employed to understand and engage in social processes’.