Our HRAF 2025 Year in Review & 2026 Preview  summarizes our highlights from the previous year, as well as what you can expect to see from HRAF over the next 12 months.

Topics featured include:

• Culture & Tradition Updates
• eHRAF Updates
• New HRAF Advanced Cross-Cultural Research Course
• Staff Updates
• Research & Publications

We look forward to a new year with new developments across our eHRAF databases as well as our open access resources.

We encourage you to follow us on our social media channels and to sign up for academic research updates through the HRAF Academic Quarterly.

Read our 2025 Year in Review and 2026 Preview

Culture collections in the eHRAF databases are updated up to several times a year. Below is a brief summary of cultures and traditions that we have added or updated in eHRAF World Cultures and eHRAF Archaeology in the past year, followed by a preview of what we will be working on analyzing throughout 2026. For 2026, we aim to prioritize the publication of HRAF's new and/or updated African Diaspora collections in eHRAF World Cultures. Stay tuned for updates throughout the year.

If you would like to support our ongoing efforts to improve HRAF’s resources for cross-cultural research, please consider becoming a Friend of HRAF. Interested in membership for your institution? Contact HRAF for trial access to eHRAF World Cultures and eHRAF Archaeology.

Read our summary of new cultures and traditions

HRAF is pleased to announce the publication of our new article that investigates global variation in the human experience of environmental hazards. 

From local knowledge to global patterns: a cross-cultural study of the dimensions of hazards and adaptive capacity was published this January in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction and is now available open access. This research draws upon a global sample of 132 societies to: 

1) Describe and analyze five key ecological dimensions of environmental hazards, including event type, frequency, onset speed, predictability, and severity. 2) Explore how these five dimensions influence human responses and event outcomes.

Read about global variation and environmental hazards

That we live in uncertain times is almost certainly an understatement. Every day, news headlines feature an unprecedented use of the term "unprecedented" to describe events as they occur around the world. How do humans deal with uncertainty? Is it the same everywhere? How do we cope in the face of chaos, turbulence, and unpredictability?

If you are interested in conducting a cross-cultural study into divination and oracles, rich ethnographic data can be found in the eHRAF World Cultures database, where you can search over 360 cultures using the OCM subject identifiers 787 Revelation and Divination or 791 Magicians and Diviners. Some of these examples will be explored below.

Read about divination and decision making