Public Anthropology: Knowledge Practices and Societal Interventions of the Anthropological Disciplines

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Hansjörg Dilger
• Subject Area: Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology
• Term: since 2021
• Website: Homepage
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 464994376

Beyond academia, social and cultural anthropologists as well as European ethnologists present their research results to a broader public in museum exhibitions, press articles or TV interviews as well as through commissioned research. In addition to these conventional forms of knowledge transfer, digital formats and cooperative projects are increasingly being implemented in close collaboration with the researched groups and "stakeholders". This development is internationally recognized as "Public Anthropology". More than previous applied or engaged approaches, Public Anthropology is invested in analyzing and theorizing its public interventions, explicitly reflecting on these interventions' ethical, epistemological and political implications.The central goal of this network is to expand and deepen the cooperation between European and Non-European Anthropology in Germany in the specific field of Public Anthropology. The network aims to establish this field as a distinct form of anthropological practice that not only reacts to social challenges, but also critically deliberates and proactively shapes the responses to these challenges. For decades, historically grown institutional structures and disciplinary politics have impeded closer contacts between the different anthropological disciplines at many locations. The network intends to change this by building on the disciplines' overlaps and similarities. At the same time, being aware of the disciplines' differences and specificities in their public engagement will provide an additional resource for robust interdisciplinary cooperation. Ten network members each are professionally based in European and Non-European Anthropology.More specifically, the network will produce the following results: It presents a genealogy of public interventions in Folklore Studies and Ethnology as well as their successor disciplines regarding their epistemological and methodological approaches - both in the German-speaking area and selected international contexts. It generates a differentiated understanding of the various social publics which the anthropological disciplines are confronted with, as well as of the means and logics to transform such publics through anthropological initiatives. Finally, the network develops strategies on how the anthropological disciplines can publicly intervene in a conjoined and targeted manner, for example through collaborative approaches and network building. In all these regards, the network will constantly address the consequences for institutional structures of the disciplines as well as research, teaching and the promotion of young scholars. The aim is to establish Public Anthropology in Germany - a field that has not taken concrete shape so far.

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks
• Co-Investigator: Professorin Gisela Welz, Ph.D.