While universities worldwide scramble to catch up with developments in AI, what is happening in anthropology classrooms? How are teachers and students of social and cultural anthropology discussing, engaging with, or boycotting AI agents? What, if anything, are anthropology departments doing differently in the wake of generative AI? Are they preparing their students for a radically altered workplace and if so, how? And how might anthropologists contribute to broader emerging debates on AI in higher education?
Addressing these urgent questions will illuminate diverse anthropological pedagogies, particularly around how to balance the critical and intellectual value of anthropology with its potential practical and public contributions. As teachers, we may want to help our students be effective critical contributors to public debate about AI. But should we also give them tools to engage AI in practical, reflexive and anthropologically relevant ways? How and where exactly – in workplaces, activist organising, or policymaking and regulatory initiatives?
The need to assess the state of play and share best practice has become urgent. To do our best by our students, we need to draw on the collective wisdom and experience of the global anthropological community.
The aim of this online symposium is to provide a space for teachers of social and cultural anthropology, and their students, to share their experiences with regards their practical pedagogic engagement with AI.
We are looking for contributions that discuss how to teach anthropology post-AI in light of students’ diverse trajectories and professional lives. We particularly welcome contributions that outline how teachers are identifying and communicating anthropologically specific AI skills in concrete ways. Are these skills practical just as much as critical and analytical? What exactly might such skills allow students to do? Identify biases? Engineer LLM prompts? Design and conduct research? Simulate social dynamics?
We are particularly interested in collaborative contributions that include students and not just teachers. We are also keen to hear about the distinct challenges posed to anthropology teaching and learning around AI in different national, regional and local contexts. What are you doing and hope to achieve in your classroom? What concrete constraints are you facing? What possibilities do you envision?
The online symposium will take place on 4th and 5th June 2026.
Abstracts of 250 words to be submitted by 10 January 2026 via this link: https://forms.office.com/e/Kg15qN1SPB
Contact anthroai@st-andrews.ac.uk for any enquiries
Organising committee: Paloma Gay Blasco, Teo Zidaru, Adam Reed