HRAF will visit New Orleans, LA November 19-22, 2025 for the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting. The meeting will take place at the New Orleans Marriott and the Sheraton New Orleans. The theme of this year's meeting is "Ghosts" which takes inspiration from the popular reputation of New Orleans as "the most haunted city in America" examining the ways that the past haunts the present.

Dr. Carol Ember and Dr. Matthew Longcore will be in attendance at the AAA meeting. If you are attending the meeting, please visit HRAF at Booth #115 in the exhibit hall to learn about the eHRAF World Cultures and eHRAF Archaeology databases. We will be giving away HRAF tote bags, free trials of the databases, and exclusive discounts to those in attendance.

Dr. Michael Fischer and Ben Kluga will make a presentation titled

Ethnography as Language Model: Speaking Beyond the Text. Their poster explores the use of Large Language Models (LLMs), or Generative Artificial Intelligence, as tools for dynamically evaluating ethnographic writing. This session will take place in the Marriott Grand Ballroom on November 21 from 6:00pm to 7:30pm.

Click here to read about the 2025 AAA Annual Meeting

The third HRAF Academic Quarterly of 2025 by Dr. Francine Barone features publications based on research using data from the eHRAF databases as well as our open access resources, including Explaining Human Culture (EHC).

Featured topics include:

• A global database on blowguns
• Hunter-gatherer children at school
• Hunger, starvation, famine and eating habits
• Sibling gender, inheritance customs, and education
• Herding, armed conflict, and a culture of honor
• Climate and human behavior studies in the warming world
• Morality and the gods
• Fabrics and funerals: an ethnographic enquiry
• Homo faber in the making: human toolmaking
• Exploring potential lime use in hide processing

Research by HRAF staff and affiliates is also featured:

• Aspects of local beliefs, spiritual practices and rituals performed in Ethiopia
• Dynamics of built and unbuilt infrastructure through cultural extensions

Click here to read the HRAF Academic Quarterly

With the support of the National Science Foundation (BCS #2020156), HRAF held three years of Summer Institutes for Cross-Cultural Anthropological Research from 2021-2023. The primary instructors were Carol R. Ember (Human Relations Area Files at Yale University, USA), Fiona Jordan (University of Bristol, UK) and Seán Roberts (Cardiff University, UK). Additional lectures were delivered by Damián Blasi, Alexandra Brewis Slade, Joshua Conrad Jackson, Jeremy Koster, Erik Ringen, Eleanor Power, and Amber Wutich.

HRAF is pleased to announce that course materials based on these Summer Institutes are now available to the public. The HRAF Advanced Cross-Cultural Research Course is self-guided.

Carol Ember, HRAF's President, will introduce these course materials in a workshop offered on the following dates.



Register here:

Thursday, Nov. 13 at 11am ET

Tuesday, Dec. 2 at 11am ET

Click here for the Cross-Cultural Research Course

Please join us for an upcoming workshop hosted by Matthew Longcore which will provide an informative overview to teaching and conducting research using the eHRAF databases. These workshops are designed for faculty members and librarians at colleges that have membership with the eHRAF databases, or those who are interested in learning more about membership.

HRAF has developed resources to support teaching and learning. We will explore Teaching eHRAF, our collection of ready-to-use exercises and syllabi that make it easier to integrate eHRAF into classrooms and curricula. These materials are designed to help instructors engage students with cross-cultural comparison, ethnographic case studies, and hands-on data analysis. We will also demonstrate the eHRAF Workbooks for introductory courses in cultural anthropology and archaeology with activities to engage students.

Register here:

Thursday, Nov. 6 at 11am ET 

Thursday, Dec. 4 at 1pm ET

Click here to read about the eHRAF Workshops