HRAF News Vol. 2024-07
HRAF to Exhibit at ASA Annual Meeting in Montréal
The American Sociological Association (ASA) is set to host its annual meeting this year from August 9 to 13 in Montréal, Canada. The annual meeting provides the opportunity for professionals to share knowledge and new developments in their research and practice. 

The theme of this year's meeting, "Intersectional Solidarities: Building Communities of Hope, Justice, and Joy," was chosen by ASA President Joya Misra. The Human Relations Area Files at Yale University is pleased to be in attendance and will have an exhibit at the meeting. Staff members Matthew Longcore and Amanda Westcott will represent HRAF at the meeting.

This year marks the 119th ASA Annual Meeting. Our decision to attend the meeting is based on growing interest in the eHRAF databases among scholars in the social sciences and humanities, particularly sociologists who are interested in comparative and cross-cultural approaches to the study of human societies. We look forward to showcasing our resources.

HRAF was pleased to attend the Anthropology and Education conference in London hosted by the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI).

The conference took place at Senate House, University of London from June 25 to 28, 2024. The Council on Anthropology and Education of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) was a co-organizer of the conference.

The theme of the conference was Anthropology and Education, a focus sparked by the multiple contemporary challenges that anthropologists are faced with as they seek to teach and educate. The goal of the conference was to share innovative responses to these challenges.

Michael Fischer, Vice President of HRAF, and Matthew Longcore, Director of Membership and Outreach, shared a presentation titled Teaching Anthropology Globally with HRAF Resources. The authors of the presentation are Francine Barone, Ben Kluga, Matthew Longcore, Michael Fischer, and Carol R. Ember.

HRAF would like to extend a heartfelt welcome to our newest and reactivating member institutions who have joined in the first half of 2024:

  • Bowling Green State University

  • Eastern New Mexico University

  • Northwestern Connecticut Community College

  • Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

  • Quinebaug Valley Community College

  • Register of Professional Archaeologists

  • Seoul National University

  • Trinity College

  • Tulsa University

  • University of Amsterdam

  • University of Ferrara

  • University of Melbourne

  • Université Mohammed VI Polytechnique

  • Yukon University
In honor of our 75th anniversary, we are pleased to feature video recordings from members of the broader HRAF community. This month we are featuring a video from Fiona Jordan, Professor in Anthropology at the University of Bristol, where she is principal investigator (PI) of the excd.lab on the Evolution of Cross-Cultural Diversity.

Her cross-cultural research combines methods, data, and theory from biology, psychology, anthropology, and linguistics, with a focus on cultural phylogenetics: understanding cultural diversity using the same statistical tools that biologists use to investigate evolutionary and diversity processes in other species. She is also the co-PI of an NSF grant that supported 3-years of HRAF Summer Institutes in Cross-Cultural Anthropological Research.

Fiona is interested in kinship, language, and natural resources, and her primary region of interest is the Austronesian-speaking world. Fiona's recent projects on the cultural evolution of kinship diversity have been funded by the European Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, and the British Academy; and work on the linguistic and dynamics of the transmission of narratives was funded by the Max Planck Society.

HRAF at Yale University|hraf.yale.edu