Dear EASA Members,
“It is a serious thing / Just to be alive / On this fresh morning / In the broken world” — Mary Oliver
With these words, I wish you all a fresh start to the new academic year. As we move forward, we carry our scholarship and service with us despite the turmoil across our world: genocide in Gaza, war in Ukraine and Russia’s threats to neighboring countries, suppression of dissidents in places like Serbia and Turkey, budget cuts threatening our disciplines throughout Europe, and rising right-wing attacks on academic freedoms and the very diversity we study and celebrate as anthropologists. The emotional, physical, and professional toll of these challenges is undeniable, and we must acknowledge its impact on our community. Rather than withdrawing into isolation, I invite us to come together and reflect on these difficulties as a collective. Our community check-in on October 23 at 12 PM CET will provide one such opportunity for this shared reflection.
As you know, in July 2025, we published implementation guidelines for cutting ties with Israeli academic institutions. This fulfilled our democratic duty to address our membership’s historic motion, which achieved the highest voter turnout in EASA’s history with 78% approval in our November 2024 e-vote. Thank you, and thanks to our Working Group on Human Rights and Academic Freedom (Julie Billaud, Chandana Mathur, Ruba Salih, and Helena Zohdi) for their dedication in developing these guidelines in consultation with the Executive Committee.
This motion targets institutional collaborations while explicitly protecting individuals, including those at Israeli institutions. As the EASA Executive Committee, we remain fully committed to fighting all forms of racism, including anti-Palestinian racism, Islamophobia, and antisemitism, ensuring EASA remains democratic and open to all differences in line with anthropology’s true ethics. This motion represents non-violent action following pressure tactics that successfully dismantled unjust regimes like South African apartheid. EASA has proudly led the way among academic institutions, recently featured in the Guardian for our role in the growing adoption of pressure tactics to end the genocide in Palestine. We have brought anthropology back into public view as a discipline committed to justice, enhancing our relevance in crucial public debates. We’re becoming a leading voice in the global anthropological world confronting attacks on our discipline and academic freedoms. You can see this commitment in my recent American Ethnologist interview alongside APLA (Association of Political and Legal Anthropology) president and longtime EASA member Heath Cabot, where we explored strategies for defending academic freedom across borders. I’ll represent EASA and our membership’s interests at the upcoming World Anthropological Union Congress in Antigua, Guatemala, and the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting in New Orleans. These are crucial opportunities to strengthen international solidarity and develop collaborative strategies across institutions to protect and advance our discipline. Please reach out if you’d like to meet during these gatherings to discuss potential collaborations.
However, principled stands for justice inevitably invite backlash. We were not spared from hatred-filled outside attacks from right-wing lobbyists, lawyers, and journalists. For instance, a major right-wing UK publication recently featured our photographs, singling me out with my full headshot while comments overflowed with hatred. Commenters attacked our discipline as “illegitimate science”, referred to us as “usual suspects” and “bandits with names that match”, and described us as a “crippling disease to be eliminated.” These pieces serve one purpose: putting scholars like us in the crosshairs to generate targeted harassment. While such racist attacks might be anticipated by those of us who don’t fit conventional white academic profiles, they extend well beyond personal targeting to challenge our entire Executive Committee and disrespect our membership’s democratic mandate. We have strong legal support (with immense gratitude to the European Center for Legal Support) and maintain full confidence in the transparency and integrity of all our actions. These attacks’ sole aim is intimidation and resource depletion. What deeply concerns me, however, is what all of this signals for the future of academic freedom.
In the face of such attacks, I invite all of us—despite and with our differences—to unite as anthropologists. We’re among the few disciplines possessing both intellectual and practical tools to address the challenging questions of living in a broken world while working to repair it with care, making it ‘home’ for all differences. We’re witnessing concerning developments worldwide where colleagues are fired for social media posts and where course content addressing diversity—LGBTQ+ struggles, indigenous movements, climate activism—faces direct intervention. In this historical moment, I also invite us to reckon with the structural inequalities embedded in our discipline, departments, and institutions, which manifest as discrimination and racism, especially against precarious junior scholars and scholars of color. As anthropologists, we understand that without addressing these systemic issues—rather than relegating them to ‘right-wing’ margins—we cannot truly confront these challenges. These urgent realities make our upcoming EASA 2026 conference in Poznań all the more vital. ‘Anthropology: Possibilities in a Polarised World’ will address these pressing questions through both classical panels and innovative multimodal formats including arts, exhibitions, and social gatherings—offering spaces for the kind of creative engagement our discipline needs. Panel submissions are now open, and I extend immense gratitude to Poznań’s local organizing committee for their dedication to this ambitious vision.
The Executive Committee channels our efforts into creative action, forging new spaces for anthropologists both within our institutions and in demonstrating anthropological perspectives’ vital importance to broader publics. This newsletter showcases the breadth of initiatives we’re undertaking in this spirit. While I can only briefly highlight a few here, the richness of these projects deserves your full attention; I encourage you to delve into the detailed coverage throughout the newsletter to truly appreciate the scope of our collective work.
We recently launched our new Working Group on Public Anthropology. Aligned with our strategic plan (finalized version available for review in this newsletter) and making EASA’s governing structure as inclusive as possible, we circulated a call for new participants to work with EASA exec liaisons in implementing the Working Group, for which we already have several ideas and projects underway and soon to be announced.
Throughout this newsletter, you’ll discover the vibrant ecosystem of activities that sustains our community. You’ll find information on our webinar series on research careers and working conditions (special thanks to Alexandra Oancă for spearheading this initiative), updates on upcoming network events—the intellectual backbone of our association—that continue advancing cutting-edge scholarship, and news of our flagship journal Social Anthropology’s increasing success (immense gratitude to the editorial collective for their exceptional work). We also welcome our new Integrity Committee members, Aastha Tyagi and Falia Varelaki, and introduce our new Communication Officer, Anna Seeger, who is already experimenting with innovative multimodal formats that reflect our discipline’s creative potential.
We’re proud to launch our Mentorship Programme’s second year. Following an overwhelming response—nearly 70 applications from emerging scholars spanning Japan to Morocco, India to Nigeria, and across Europe—we’ve expanded this year’s cohort to 25 mentees. The Mentoring Committee is launching a comprehensive webinar series, recorded and freely available on our website, extending mentorship access to our broader community. Profound gratitude to our dedicated mentors whose generous commitment forms the foundation of this programme.
In my first solo letter as president, I want to express again my profound gratitude for entrusting us with this mandate through your votes. We honor departing colleagues Dominic Bryan, Hege Høyer Leivestad, Roger Sansi Roca, David Mills, and Monica Heintz, who stewarded our association with remarkable dedication. We enthusiastically welcome Jonas Tinius as secretary, Maarja Kaaristo as treasurer, and new executive members Fabiola Mancinelli, Panas Karampampas, and co-opted member Sultan Doughan. My heartfelt thanks to Ana Ivasiuc, our former president and current vice-president, whose commitment has shaped EASA’s intellectual trajectory. Special thanks also to the exceptional team at NomadIT, without whom navigating these complex times would be unimaginable.
I feel immensely privileged working with this remarkable team. The solidarity and enthusiasm I see among the executive members, our incredible networks and membership makes me believe more and more in the possibility of imagining things differently despite all odds—and thank you! To those of you who feel drained and exhausted by the many systemic injustices of our world, including within our institutions and precarious labor systems, know that as the Executive Committee we’re always ready to address any emerging issues and concerns from our membership. If the beauty of anthropology lies in making sense of the world’s messiness, then perhaps what some might dismiss as our ‘romantic idealism’ is precisely what allows us to see possibilities where others see only despair.
With this note on the enduring power of solidarity, I circle back to the question of how we live together, closing with words from another poem dear to my heart by Turkish poet Nazım Hikmet, who wrote from prison yet never lost hope in human possibility:
“To live! Like a tree, solitary and free /Like a forest, in solidarity!“
In solidarity and with deep gratitude,
Dr. Hayal Akarsu President, European Association of Social Anthropologists