Paper short abstract:

In this presentation, I would like to entertain the proposition that the discipline of Anthropology and its residents need to cultivate new publics, receptive to its diverse forms of expertise. I will float some ideas about how to go about this cultivation, offering advice I should take myself.

Paper long abstract:

In this presentation, I would like to entertain the proposition that the discipline of Anthropology and its residents need to cultivate new publics, receptive to its diverse forms of expertise. The discipline is public-poor (isn’t it?). Our environment, within academia, is increasingly hostile and the number who might defend us outside academia seems to be dwindling. ‘Public engagement’ seems to have be contained to something we do in distant fieldsites, proximate classrooms, social media platforms and sometimes also through the open proclamation of moral or political positions on current events. Reflecting on my own experiences in the past several years, in particular through developing academic podcasts and other initiatives with the intention of making the field more accessible to a range of individuals in the discipline's various borderlands, I will float some ideas about how we might go about cultivating new publics, offering advice I should probably take myself.