HRAF Advanced Research Centers

Collaboration opens up significant new opportunities for comparative ethnography-based ‘research and implementation’

HRAF Advanced Research Centers (hrafARC) aims to develop and apply new paradigms for comparative research to address outcomes emerging from human complexity and diversity. hrafARC has an overarching goal of expanding its reach and programs globally and invites other collaborations. The main research center is at the HRAF headquarters in New Haven. There is another research center in Europe.

At Yale, HRAF launched its Advanced Research Center in 2014 with a 4-year interdisciplinary behavioral and social science (IBSS) project supported by the National Science Foundation. The project, “Climate-Related Hazards, Disasters, and Cultural Transformations” has investigators from cultural anthropology, archaeology, psychology, geography and climatology, comparing worldwide samples of societies, archaeological traditions, and countries in their responses to hazards related to food production, storage, and availability. The PI for the grant is Carol R. Ember (HRAF), and the co-PIs are Benjamin Felzer (Lehigh University), Michele J. Gelfand (University of Maryland), Eric C. Jones (University of Texas-Houston), and Peter N. Peregrine (Lawrence University). The Senior Researchers are Teferi Abate Adem (HRAF) and Ian Skoggard (HRAF). Read more about the project. hrafARC was established by Carol R. Ember, President of HRAF, and Michael D. Fischer, Vice President of HRAF.

hrafARC [EU] is initially developing research focused on the core themes of (a) food security and the sustainable organisation of agriculture and markets, and (b) the interplay of disjunctive narratives and discourses, with initial applications to reducing ethnic tension in the EU. hrafARC is seeking funding through ‘Horizon 2020’, the EU Framework Programme for research and innovation and other funding bodies. hrafARC [EU] was established by Michael. D. Fischer, Professor of Anthropological Sciences and Director of the Centre for Social Anthropology and Computing and Alan Bicker, Senior Research Fellow, both of the School of Anthropology and Conservation at the University of Kent, UK. More information about these projects can be found at http://hrafarc.eu/.