Category: Uncategorized

Choosing Each Other: Multimodal Ethnographies of Friendship as Community Care

Emory Anthropology faculty Debra Vidali and Anthropology undergraduate Alice Stern (C ‘28) were selected to open the annual Society for Humanistic Anthropology (SHA) Fall Conference on Oct 2, 2026 with an immersive performance-based experience, based on Vidali’s research in ethnographic theater-making. In addition, Emory Anthropology PhD alumnae, Joanna Davidson (LGS ’07) and Dinah Hannaford (LGS ‘14), were selected to close the conference, with a roundtable on the ethics and enduring resonances of fieldwork friendships.

The SHA conference theme was “Choosing Each Other: Multimodal Ethnographies of Friendship as Community Care.” The program is here.

From the SHA Conference program chair, Amina Tawasil:  

We begin the conference on Friday at 12:30 PM and open with an immersive roundtable that sets the affective and embodied tone for the entire weekend. Debra Vidali (Emory University), joined by Ash Marinaccio (Docbloc), Jules Downum (Understory), and Alice Stern (Emory University), brings together a multigenerational group of anthropologists, choreographers, dancers, and theater directors to explore how processes of theater-making and performance creation build communities of friendship, connection, and care. This session may transform into a participatory experience, inviting attendees into rehearsal exercises that activate relations of connection and care firsthand. It is a fitting way to step into two days together.

We close Saturday afternoon with a roundtable that poses a critical question at the heart of ethnographic practice. Joanna Davidson (Boston University), alongside Dinah Hannaford (University of Houston), Yana Stainova (McMaster University), and Ellen Foley (Clark University), asks why the friendships that sustain our long-term fieldwork so often remain absent from our published pages. Drawing on enduring relationships forged in West Africa and Latin America, the presenters scrutinize the ethics, trepidation, and expressive limitations that have kept these vital bonds off the page, and they ask whether multimodal ethnography might offer more conducive possibilities.

Bruce Knauft recipient of the 2026-2027 Heilbrun Distinguished Emeritus Fellowship

Heilbrun Fellowships are funded by a generous contribution from the family of Professor of Psychology Emeritus Alfred B. Heilbrun Jr. Open to emeriti faculty in the Arts and Sciences, these fellowships carry a stipend of $10,000 and provide an opportunity to continue research and scholarship in retirement. https://emeritus.emory.edu/programs/research-fellowships.html

How to Secure Philanthropic Funding in a Competitive Environment

A collaborative project of Kristin Phillips, Emory Anthropology, and Jola Ajibade, Emory Environmental Sciences, mentioned in recent Nature article as a great example of interdisciplinary research.

“Bringing together researchers from different disciplines leads to much more interesting and innovative scholarship.”

“Organizing around interdisciplinary problem spaces is one of the things foundations can often do better than can government funders whose funding structures are often set up along disciplinary lines.”

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01198-0

Federico Sánchez Vargas wins AABA conference award

Anthropology graduate student Federico Sánchez Vargas has won the Outstanding Student Presentation Award for his poster on CapuchinAI at the 2026 American Association of Biological Anthropologist conference in Denver. The AABA has long recognized the important contributions made to our discipline by students. Their work reflects the promise and future of our field. This award recognizes the important contributions students make to the field and celebrates innovative, rigorous research by emerging scholars.

Congratulations, Fede!

$1 million Sloan grant funds deep look at data center boom in U.S. South

Emory faculty Kristin Phillips (left), associate professor of anthropology, and Jola Ajibade, associate professor of environmental sciences, are co-investigators on a three-year project to study the impact of the rapid growth of data centers.

— Photos courtesy of Philips and Ajibade.

The massive data centers needed to run AI systems are rapidly altering geographical landscapes and communities. That’s especially true in the U.S. South, where many states are dominated by large, investor-owned utilities and land and other natural resources are still relatively available.

“Data centers are proliferating alongside the explosive growth of cloud computing and AI technologies,” says Kristin Phillips, associate professor of anthropology at Emory University. “People are raising concerns about who is reaping the benefits of these facilities and who is bearing the economic and environmental costs.”

Phillips, a sociocultural anthropologist who studies the social context of energy and infrastructure, is digging deeply into these questions and their implications for the U.S. South, funded by a $1 million grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. 

Her co-principal investigators on the grant are Jola Ajibade, Emory associate professor of environmental sciences, and Gabe Schwartzman, assistant professor of geography and sustainability at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Cathy Kunkel, from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, and Nikki Luke, a human geographer at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, will serve as consultants to the co-investigators.

The three-year project will research the current and potential effects of data centers on electricity costs for individual ratepayers, structural changes to how energy is supplied and consumed, and issues of environmental and social justice. The researchers will conduct case studies for three states: Georgia, Virginia and Tennessee.

They will combine qualitative and quantitative methods, drawing data from interviews, surveys, official documents, cost analyses, focus groups and ethnography to consider the perspectives of utilities, state and local officials, workers, community organizations and residents.

Existing and planned data center sites will be mapped and made available online. These maps will be overlaid with demographic data on the surrounding communities.

The researchers will also develop a comparative analysis of the regulatory and policy landscapes across the three states to identify best practices. The different stakeholders will be actively engaged in all aspects of the work, from project scoping to implementing research plans and disseminating the results.

New Center for Native and Indigenous Studies set to launch in Fall 2023

Emory College of Arts and Sciences is set to launch a new Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies this fall to advance and inspire research, scholarship, teaching and learning rooted in and related to Indigenous studies.

In conjunction with the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, and through seven years of ongoing work by an interdisciplinary group involving dozens of faculty, students and staff including Dr. Craig Womack (emeritus, English), Dr. Malinda Maynor Lowery (History), Associate Dean Beth Michel (OUA), Anthropology alumna Klamath Henry (C19), current Anthropology seniors Iliyah Bruffett (C23) and Sierra Talavera Brown (C23), and Anthropology faculty member Dr. Debra Vidali, Emory University is launching a Center for Native and Indigenous Studies in Fall 2023.  

Check out the full article here!

Chikako and Brendan Ozawa-de Silva’s piece “A Vaccine for the Loneliness Epidemic” was featured in the Special Issue of Diplomatic Courier for the World Economic Forum

In 2018, then UK Prime Minister Theresa May said, “Loneliness is one of the greatest public health challenges of our time,” and appointed the country’s first minister for loneliness. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called loneliness a “growing health epidemic,” stating that social isolation is “associated with a reduction in lifespan similar to that caused by smoking 15 cigarettes a day.”

What do the following have in common? Rising rates of social anxiety and social withdrawal, alarming rates of suicide (up 51% among teenage girls in the U.S. in just a two-year period from 2019-2021, and up over 300% over a ten-year period), the increasing number of mass shootings, the epidemic of burnout in healthcare and other sectors, eating disorders. All too often, at the heart of each of these is a lack of social connection and the feeling of being loved, accepted, and understood. This is loneliness. Education is the most powerful tool we have for bringing about this change. Recent research in psychology and neuroscience shows that young children and even infants have a natural orientation towards kindness and helping over cruelty.

Read the full article here!

Check out Chikako’s interview about her book, The Anatomy of Loneliness.