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Paper short abstract

How should anthropology be taught in an age of AI and other wicked problems? Drawing on the Antro Radikoj project and an experimental graduate course, I argue for shifting anthropology education from knowledge transmission toward the cultivation of practical wisdom and openness to diverse knowledge

Paper long abstract

How can we meaningfully prepare future generations of anthropologists to engage with the growing number of ‘wicked’ problems facing Planet Earth? Many contemporary challenges are characterized not only by uncertainty in knowledge but also by disagreement about the values at stake. Such conditions raise important questions about what anthropology should teach and how it should be taught.

My involvement in the governance of the discipline at both the European (EASA) and global (IUAES, WAU) levels has led me to reflect critically on anthropology curricula worldwide. Together with a group of international colleagues, I obtained Wenner-Gren Foundation seed funding for the project Antro Radikoj (‘Roots of Anthropology’), which examined the current state of anthropological teaching with particular attention to decanonizing the curriculum and creating openings for alter-native pedagogies.

Underlying this work is the conviction that anthropology has always been about more than the transmission of knowledge. At its best, the discipline has sought to communicate forms of practical wisdom emerging from sustained engagement with diverse ways of being in the world, including Indigenous and other marginalized praxis traditions. Drawing on insights from the Antro Radikoj project, I critically analyze an experimental graduate course designed to foster students’ practical wisdom through collaborative inquiry, reflexive learning, and engagement with non-hegemonic anthropological traditions.

I argue that educational approaches centred on cultivating judgment, openness to different perspectives, and the ability to ask meaningful questions may be better suited to an era increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence than pedagogies focused primarily on the transfer of knowledge.