AU Anthro's Public Anthropology Conference is back - and reimagined - for 2025!
The AU Department of Anthropology is excited to announce that our annual signature event – the Public Anthropology Conference – is back. With new funding support from the AU Office of Research, we are revitalizing the Public Anthropology Conference – building upon past conferences’ successes and commitment to deep engagement while expanding the event's scope, offerings, and even physical location.
2025’s Public Anthropology Conference will be a free-to-the-public, two-day event held at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in downtown Washington, D.C. on November 7 and 8. The event will blend traditional formats (panels, papers, and posters) with more interactive formats such as group dialogues, workshops, walking tours, performances, films, and more. The event will prioritize engagement and knowledge sharing between an expansive set of thinkers and doers: AU Anthropology faculty and staff, graduate and undergraduate students, community organizations, advocates, other scholars from AU and the wider region, public scholars, members of the general public, and more.
The conference will offer numerous ways for students, alumni, researchers, and community members to get involved, including paid student fellowships, a methods-focused class in Fall 2025 on participatory research, and volunteer opportunities the weekend of the conference. We are also looking to fill an advisory board with alumni, faculty external to AU Anthro, and community partners.
For those who are interested in learning more – whether about opportunities for students, the advisory board, or the conference in general – we have two upcoming information sessions:
Please RSVP to receive the calendar invite and virtual meeting link.
Additional information on conference details, abstracts, and schedule will be published in the coming weeks. In the meantime, be sure to sign up for our newsletter to receive notifications on major announcements, deadlines, and planning updates. We are excited to build this with you all!