CfP: Histories of Anthropology, Cambridge 18-19 September 2017


Histories of Anthropology: Transforming Knowledge and Power (1870-1970)

University of Cambridge, 18-19 September 2017

Keynote Speaker: Sadiah Qureshi (Birmingham)

The rise of anthropology as an academic discipline transformed the development of cognate disciplines and the interaction of power and knowledge in the modern world. This two-day conference will explore these two themes in terms of the social, intellectual and political history of anthropology, ranging in scale from the local to the transnational and global.

We seek papers on the history of anthropology in terms of two broadly conceived themes. The first concerns the history of anthropology's relationship with cognate disciplines. In the second theme, we seek papers on the political and social history of anthropology, its relationship to governance, colonialism and broader political and social transformations. We welcome proposals that seek to describe changes over the course of the whole timespan or focus on specific events, debates, disputes and biographies between 1870 - 1970. We are particularly interested in transnational and trans-colonial perspectives, and we encourage submissions from academics at any stage of their careers.

We invite proposals for individual 20-minute papers broadly concerned with the following :

- Interaction of anthropologists with other experts in the colonial field

- How anthropology supported or undermined colonial administrations

- The place of professional networks, metropolitan and peripheral, in the history of anthropology

- How race, gender and sexuality influenced anthropologists' authority

- Relationship between anthropology and cognate disciplines

- The role of interdisciplinarity in anthropology

- The application of colonial research within the Western metropole 

Please submit an abstract (max. 300 words) and a brief description of your academic affiliation and disciplinary background to:


We will announce accepted papers by early June. Limited funding will be provided to support travel and accommodation for participants outside the University of Cambridge. The ability to teleconference will also be provided if participants are unable to travel.

Freddy Foks, Valentina Mann & Viktor M Stoll  (Conference Committee)