The Human Relations Area Files at Yale University has enjoyed a wonderful year in celebration of HRAF’s 75th Anniversary. On February 26, 1949, delegates from Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Oklahoma, the University of Washington, and

Yale University met in New Haven, Connecticut to pledge their membership in a nonprofit research organization to be based at Yale. On May 7, 1949, the Human Relations Area Files was formally established as an independent non-profit membership organization.

HRAF began with a small group of universities and has expanded to over 500 members around the world. While much has changed, including the transition to digital format and the production of an archaeological collection, our core mission remains the same: to promote understanding of cultural diversity and commonality in the past and present.

In honor of our anniversary, HRAF created a series of 12 videos with individuals sharing their appreciation for HRAF and discussing how they have used our resources for research and teaching. Over the past year, these videos have been featured in our monthly newsletters. The individuals featured include:

• Brea McCauley
• Timothy Earle
• Fiona Jordan
• Zach Garfield
• Amber Johnson
• Václav Hrnčíř
• Sheina Lew-Levy
• Irene Glasser
• Manvir Singh
• Michele Gelfand
• John Millhauser
• H. Russell Bernard

Please celebrate our 75th Anniversary by making a donation to the Friends of HRAF.

Click here to read HRAF's 75th Anniversary Retrospective

In 2016, while writing Ethnowise, an interdisciplinary cultural anthropology textbook, Professor Michael Kimball of the University of Northern Colorado discovered the value of the eHRAF World Cultures database for sourcing ethnographic material.

This marked the beginning of a multi-year journey with eHRAF, culminating in participation in the 2022 HRAF Summer Institute for Cross-Cultural Anthropological Research. Kimball developed the following research question: What kinds of knowledge do Altered States of Consciousness (ASCs) produce? Initially, the inquiry yielded limited results. However, the experience laid a foundation for ongoing pedagogical investigation.

Kimball integrated eHRAF into an undergraduate Honors course, Culture & Consciousness. A breakthrough came when Kimball discovered Gregory Shushan’s cross-cultural work on Near-Death Experiences (NDEs), which provided a framework for a student research project. Using Shushan’s analytical categories and eHRAF subject codes, student teams investigated NDEs across 82 cultures.

Students presented their posters at UNC’s conference. On May 2, 2025, Kimball and one of his students, Kyle Landwehr, made presentations at the annual conference of the Association for the Anthropology of Consciousness.

Landwehr presented the results of the research that he conducted with Adam Schwartz using eHRAF to investigate NDEs in Indigenous South American societies. Kimball also presented the pedagogical map he developed for his Culture & Consciousness curriculum. This highlights eHRAF’s capacity to inspire cross-cultural inquiry and undergraduate research.

Click here to read about student research with eHRAF

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 Russ Bernard, Director of the Institute for Social Science Research at Arizona State University and Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Florida. Professor Bernard was a long-time HRAF Board Member who served on the Executive Committee. He was also Chairman of the Board for two terms.

Russ Bernard is a cultural anthropologist specializing in technology and social change, language death, and social network analysis. He has taught or done research at universities in the United States, Greece, Japan, and Germany. Since 1987, he has participated in National Science Foundation-sponsored summer courses on research methods and design. He is former editor of Human Organization and the American Anthropologist and is the current editor of Field Methods. Professor Bernard was the 2003 recipient of the Franz Boas Award from the American Anthropological Association and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Click here to watch the video from Russ Bernard

The first HRAF Academic Quarterly of 2025 by Dr. Francine Barone features 15 publications using HRAF data since the start of the year.

Here are the topics:

• musical and vocal features across cultures
• cross-cultural analyses of knotting traditions
• problem-solving computer systems & the human brain
• a debate on lethal intergroup conflict in human evolution
• Jack Goody’s contributions to British social anthropology
• the cross-cultural use of poison by hunter-gatherers
• art, aesthetics and evolution
• death in the Irish and British Mesolithic
• what’s new in cross-cultural research? (SCCR)
• using the PSF to understand sources of pregnancy advice
• the ethnographic dimensions of hazards
• resource stress, natural hazards, and sharing
• dimensions of hazards for political leadership
• political participation and community cohesion
• ethics of warfare and natural hazards on religiosity

Click here to read the HRAF Academic Quarterly