In this episode Familiar Stranger Emma Quilty sat down with Associate Professor Oneka LaBennett to talk about her most recent book, Global Guyana: Shaping Race, Gender, and Environment in the Caribbean and Beyond

In this episode Familiar Stranger sat down with Fijian author and political analyst Edward Narain and Associate Professor Tarryn Philips from La Trobe University. Together Edward and Tarryn published Sugar: An Ethnographic Novel which reveals the extent to which the lives, health, and opportunities of Fijians are still dramatically affected by the country’s colonial past and entrenched inequality. Set in Suva, with a tropical cyclone looming, Sugar follows three strangers from different cultural backgrounds as they find themselves entwined in a brutal murder: revealing inconvenient truths about the darker side of global development in Fiji. The story follows a naïve but well-intentioned Australian health volunteer, a jaded Indo-Fijian amateur historian, and a troubled Fijian (iTaukei) teen caring for his diabetic grandmother. The reader is immersed in each character’s world and slowly comes to understand the historical and structural reasons behind Fiji’s diabetes epidemic, exploitative labour and trade practices, and the role Australia and other nations play in both. Head over to our website for a full list of Links and Citations!

Producer’s note: Hi everyone, Executive Producer Matt here, just wanted to slide in here quickly and say that we recorded this panel a while ago, so you might hear some familiar voices! Just wanted to say a quick thank you to Irina, Andrew, Ruonan and Alex for all their effort in recording this panel! We hope you like it. We’ve gone digging and we struck some gold! We recorded this panel a little while ago at the Centre for the Public Awareness of Science’s podcast studio with some of the PhD candidates based at the ANU. In this panel, Familiar Stranger Ruonan opens the floor up to familiar Stranger Alex to talk about some of the differences he noticed around when it comes to “bushwalking”/hiking versus, you know, walking. The Strangers dive into the differences between the two and the interesting societal structures which determines if you’re a hiker or a walker. Familiar Stranger Irina then poses a question around identity as individuals as well as anthropologists. It launches the Strangers into pensive thoughts around who they are, the communities they are interacting with and what makes us, us and them, them. There were some really interesting topics broached on this panel and we hope you enjoy!

This week Emma Quilty sat down with Matthew Archer, Assistant Professor at Maastricht University to discuss his brand new NYU Press book Unsustainable: Measurement, Reporting, and the Limits of Corporate Sustainability. In this brilliant and incisive new book, Matthew Archer weaves together ethnographic fieldwork conducted among a wide array of sustainability professionals, interviews with private bankers, and apocalyptic science fiction—and features analyses of name-brand companies including Volkswagen, Unilever, and Nestlé. Matthew Archer is an interdisciplinary environmental social scientist interested in the intersection of technology and sustainability, especially in the context of global supply chain governance. Most recently, this has involved research on metal and mineral supply chains, with a focus on traceability and digitization, building on my previous work studying sustainability standards as a technology of governance in global agricultural supply chains, ESG integration in investment practices, and the way corporate sustainability managers think about their impacts. Head to our website for a full list of links and citations!

This week Sean Heath sat down with Noel B. Salazar, Professor of Anthropology at KU Leuven to discuss the celebration of Anthropology Day(s). Their conversation covered the initiation of world anthropology day by the American Anthropological Association and touched on national celebrations of anthropology day, as well as the potential for a World Anthropologies Days. They also discussed Noel’s latest work on emplaced mobilities and mobile places. Noel B. Salazar is Professor in Social and Cultural Anthropology and Founder of the Cultural Mobilities Research (CuMoRe) cluster at KU Leuven. His research interests include anthropologies of mobility and travel, heritage and tourism, discourses and imaginaries of Otherness, world anthropologies, and endurance locomotion. Head over to our website for a full list of links and citations

A brief update on the state of TFS project and a call for new contributors to the team.

Trigger Warning: Please note that this episode makes mention of Sexual Assault and sexual violence. In this episode we walk about MeToo anthropology from the lens of fieldwork and within the academy itself.  Familiar Stranger Emma Quilty sat down with anthropologists Holly Walters and Margaret Czerwienski to talk about the MeToo collective and its incredible array of resources as well as what it means to do activist work within the academy.  We also covered the prevalence of the witch hunt trope so often leveraged against those who make accusations against powerful individuals and institutions. Are MeToo accusations modern day witch hunts? Listen to find out.

The podcast is back! This week, we've challenged ourselves to be as meta as possible, with a podcast, about podcasting, released by an academic podcast! Try saying that after a wine or two. Familiar Stranger Tim and Sean sat down with Dr Ian Cook, who has recently released his book "Scholarly Podcasting Why, What, How?", which actually interviewed some Familiar Strange alumni, keep your ears peeled for the name drops! It was a really interesting conversation about the future of podcasting, and how academia is shaping podcasting and vice versa. Make sure you head to our website for a full list of links and citations!

It’s been a while… We’re back, this time with Familiar Strange Emma leading a panel on AI and specifically Chat GPT. This week, Emma is joined by Familiar Strangers Matt and Sean to discuss some of the advancements of ChatGPT and what it means for us as academics and human creativity. Matt dives into how his poetry has been informed by AI and Sean reveals his ultimate AI betrayal. It was a really interesting discussion, with plenty of laughs in between. We hope you enjoy!

Welcome back to the Familiar Strange. We’re kicking off 2023 with an interview with Dr Jasmijn Rana from Leiden University. Dr Jasmijn’s research interests include, gender, race-ethnicity, religion, embodiment and movement. Jasmijn is currently (2022-2023) a Marie-Sklodowska Curie Global Fellow at University of California, Berkeley. This week, Familiar Stranger Sean discusses Dr Rana’s latest ethnographic study “Punching Back - Gender, Religion and Belonging in Women-Only Kickboxing”. Sean and Dr Rana dive into the physical practices of femininity, physicality and how slacking is actually a good thing…kind of. Thank you to Dr Jasmijn Rana for taking time out of their schedule to discuss their ethnography. Head over to our website for a full list of links and citations!

We are back for 2023! This month we welcome our newest Familiar Stranger Nitya! Nitya has just finished their Master of Anthropology and is current doing some further work into Gender and mining. In this episode we deep dive into Nitya's topic and the stereotypes of mining, and dig into the current gender perceptions of the mining industry. In a belated celebration of World Anthropology day, we also dive into the anthropology origin stories of our Familiar Strangers, how they first got into anthropology, and what it means to them. It was a really insightful episode and we hope you enjoy!