HRAF celebrates Anthropology Day 2023

On Monday, February 20, the Human Relations Area Files at Yale University hosted a celebration in honor of Anthropology Day, the yearly event for anthropologists to share our discipline with the public. HRAF Director of Membership and Outreach Matthew Longcore teaches anthropology at UConn and serves as the advisor for the UConn Stamford Anthropology Society. The event was our fourth annual Anthropology Day celebration hosted by HRAF in collaboration with undergraduates from the University of Connecticut. This year we were pleased to host a group of eight students from UConn Stamford along with a postgraduate associate researcher from the Yale School of Medicine.

HRAF building at 755 Prospect Street with event attendees in front

Anthropology Day 2023

Attendees at the event included the following individuals:

  • Carol Ember, HRAF President
  • Matthew Longcore, HRAF Director of Membership and Outreach
  • Anj Droe, HRAF Research Assistant
  • Danielle Russell, HRAF Research Assistant
  • Jae Kalodner, HRAF Melvin Ember Intern
  • Avalon Moore, Yale University Postgraduate Associate Researcher
  • Lucy Van Der Merwe, UConn Stamford Anthropology Society President
  • Isabella Walsh, UConn Stamford Anthropology Society Vice President
  • Crimson Reed, UConn Stamford Anthropology Society Treasurer
  • Tahera Hoque, UConn Stamford Anthropology Society Secretary
  • Connor Brown, UConn Stamford Anthropology Society Member
  • Rowan Kennedy, UConn Stamford Anthropology Society Member
  • Nikita Kikot, UConn Stamford Anthropology Society Member
  • Veronica Paez-Deggeller, UConn Stamford Anthropology Society Member

The Anthropology Day celebration began with a visit to the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. The library is home to the Gutenberg Bible, the first Western book printed from movable type. A 1,250-year-old print of Buddhist prayers — the earliest known printed text — is now on display at the library, offering a more complete depiction of humanity’s development of printing. Following the visit to the library and lunch at a local pizza restaurant, the group took a tour of the Yale University campus.

After the campus tour, the group visited the HRAF offices at 755 Prospect Street. UConn students Lucy Van Der Merwe and Isabella Walsh presented their ethnographic fieldwork project from the Fall 2022 section of ANTH 1000 Peoples and Cultures of the World, an introductory course in cultural anthropology taught by Matthew Longcore. The project is based on the eHRAF Workbook Ethnographic Fieldwork and the Teaching eHRAF assignment An Introduction to Fieldwork and Ethnography, which were created by HRAF Director of Academic Development and Operations Francine Barone. Yale postgraduate research associate Avalon Moore shared a presentation about vaccine hesitancy titled “Patterns in the centralized delivery of information about COVID vaccine: rural vs. urban states” from the Yale Tobin Center for Economic Policy. Here are the presentations:

The event concluded with presentations about cross-cultural research and the open access database Explaining Human Culture from HRAF President Carol Ember and Melvin Ember Intern Jake Kalonder.

Many thanks to the UConn students, Yale researcher, HRAF staff members who joined us to celebrate Anthropology Day 2023.

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