1. President’s Letter
President Ana Ivasiuc addresses the membership
Our mid-summer newsletter reaches you right before our most anticipated event: the EASA2024 conference. Many of you have already started tweeting and posting on upcoming events (remember to use the hashtag #EASA2024 on X!) and it is heartening to see so much enthusiasm building up to the conference.
Although understandably the highlight of this month is the EASA conference, I want to draw your attention to four topics of interest further detailed in this newsletter.
The first is the Motion that was submitted to EASA for debate at the next AGM on the topic of collaboration with Israeli academic institutions. The Motion builds on past debates and decisions taken by the EASA membership to curtail collaboration with Israeli academic institutions situated in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (Motion debated in 2018 in Stockholm) and recommends, in light of the current genocidal violence that the Israeli state is inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, that our association takes appropriate measures to exert non-violent pressure on Israeli academic institutions to end the violation of human rights and the violence against Palestinians. We take this subject seriously and I urge all our members to consult EASAmembers4Palestineset up by the signatories of the motion, and to prepare for our debate during the AGM by going carefully through the FAQ section of the website.
The second news of interest is the constitution of the Working Group on Human Rights and Academic Freedom, which started its activity on the 1st of June. The group (on whom you can read more below), composed of Julie Billaud, Chandana Mathur, Ruba Salih, Helena Zohdi, and our executive committee liaison, Hayal Akarsu, is already active and its first task, decided during the group’s first meeting, is to monitor the debate within EASA on the Motion concerning EASA’s ties with Israeli academic institutions.
Another important initiative of the current executive committee is the setup of a mentorship program. Recognising the need for mentoring in the early stages of the academic career and taking stock of similar initiatives elsewhere, we are launching a call for mentees that will receive guidance and mentoring from a group of dedicated EASA members with a wide array of skills and expertise. My immense gratitude goes to those of you who have accepted to be mentors and are generously offering your time to pilot this initiative for the next academic year, and to my wonderful colleagues, Hege Høyer Leivestad and Hayal Akarsu for setting up the program.
Finally, many of you suggested over the last few years that a renewal of our website is long overdue. I am happy to let you know that we have started working on the complete overhaul of EASA’s website. After the first meetings with Juhani Juurik, a graphic designer trained as an anthropologist, and with our NomadIT colleagues, I can attest to how complex and time-consuming this task is. Nevertheless, we are aiming at delivering a new website - or at least a first version of it - by the beginning of December. To help us centre the needs of our membership regarding our website, we need your support with the member survey further described below.
And now very briefly again on the upcoming conference. The timetable, so carefully curated by the Local and the Scientific Committees, is brimming with incredible panels, round tables, and events that touch upon crucial issues of our time. We will debate, among other things, the kinds of public anthropology that EASA should embrace (the round table “EASA Voices in a Troubled World”, Tuesday 11.00-12.30, Room 304), the state of academic freedom and censorship around Palestine (the round table “Academic Freedom, Censorship and Palestine: Anthropology in Crisis Again”, Thursday 18.30-20.00, Museu Marítim de Barcelona), anthropological engagements with the confluence between the far-right and capitalism, the impact of precarity on anthropologists, and many more topics that demonstrate more than ever anthropology’s relevance in our worlds and times.
Our conference begins on Thursday, 18 July, with a rich online offering starting early in the morning and featuring no less than 140 panels, labs, round tables and events in a single day. A highlight on the schedule is The Mantas Kvedaravičius Film Award 2024, which we are honoured to continue from its first edition in 2022. The winning film will be screened to EASA members on the online day of the conference and followed by the award ceremony and a Q&A with the directors.
One of the things that makes me incredibly proud of our association and grateful to the Barcelona Local Committee for its work is the organisation, within EASA 2024, of events in Spanish and in Catalan. This reminds us that EASA was conceived as a multilingual association, and that amidst calls for decolonising anthropology, we should return to the polyphony afforded by our different languages. On this note, I am looking forward to wishing you Benvinguts i Benvingudes a Barcelona for #EASA2024.
