Teaching “Anthropology for Liberation” Part 2: Redesigning assessments
This is the (overdue!) second part of a series reflecting on changes I made to my undergraduate course Anthropology for Liberation at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington in 2025. In Part...
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Teaching “Anthropology for Liberation” in 2025, Part 1: What reading lists...
This year I taught my undergraduate course Anthropology for Liberation at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington after a two year break. As readers of this blog will know, I regularly post...
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Advice for PhD students approaching the examination process in Aotearoa New...
I am delighted to share this invaluable resource from my friend and colleague, Dr. April K Henderson. April has written the most thoughtful and practical advice I’ve seen on navigating the PhD...
View ArticleEthnographic writing intensive: Five activities for the fieldwork-to-writing...
Recently I have been thinking about how I learnt to transition from fieldwork to writing. Like many graduate students, mid-way through my thesis research I found myself with a stack of notebooks and...
View ArticleDeveloping a ‘Cultural Anthropology Pathways Explorer’ for a university Open Day
If you work at a university, you’ll know that Open Days are an important recruitment event. Universities here in Aotearoa are facing increasing financial challenges (a result of neoliberal higher...
View ArticleUsing GenAI to think critically about grading in a Cultural Anthropology class
In 2019, my friend and colleague Grant Otsuki started experimenting with Generative AI (GenAI) – GPT-2 by OpenAI – to see how well it did at writing an essay for a first year Cultural Anthropology...
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Drawing with Lynda Barry’s “Syllabus” in a creative ethnographic practices class
A few years ago, my friend Caroline Bennett gave me Lynda Barry’s 2014 book Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor and this term I decided to use some of Barry’s creative drawing and writing...
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How an interview request about Gen X sparked a teaching moment in an...
Last week Jogai Bhatt from RNZ approached me to do an interview about Generation X for a mini-series they are airing in the lead up to Generation X: 50 Artworks from the Chartwell Collection, a City...
View ArticleFurther reflections on writing ethnographic fieldnotes
The most popular post on my blog describes the fieldnote template I developed during the early stages of my PhD research with community-based NGOs running educational and economic development...
View ArticleTeaching ‘how to anthropology’ alongside ‘how to university’ in an...
I have taught our large introductory cultural anthropology course (ANTH 101) on and off since 2014, and every couple of years I redesign it based on conversations with colleagues, research into...
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Anthropology for Liberation assessments
Over the past few years I have been sharing the readings I assign for an undergraduate course I teach at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, Anthropology for Liberation. I modify the...
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Anthropology for Liberation readings 3.0
2021 marks the fourth year I have taught Anthropology for Liberation, an undergraduate course in the Cultural Anthropology Programme at Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington. The course is...
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Book review: Citizen Designs (2021) by Eli Elinoff
The University of Hawaiʻi Press has been publishing some excellent books lately, including Eli Elinoff’s first monograph, Citizen Designs: City-Making and Democracy in Northeastern Thailand (2021)....
View ArticleAnthropology for Liberation readings 2.0
In 2017 I taught a new course for the first time: Anthropology for Liberation. Here’s the short course description: How can Anthropology advance human emancipation from racism, gender inequality, class...
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Christchurch Mosque Attacks: A Public Syllabus
My colleague Catherine Trundle is working with students and staff from our School at Victoria University of Wellington on this important syllabus about the Christchurch Mosque Attacks. The goal is to...
View ArticleWelcome to The New Outrigger!
This is a new website initiative from ANU Pacific Studies PhD students Bianca Hennessy (who I met in 2017 when she visited Va’aomanū Pasifika at Victoria University of Wellington as part of her...
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East Side Orchestras: Music and Social Change
I am currently working on a research project that looks at the social impacts of Arohanui Strings, Porirua Soundscapes, and Virtuoso Strings. These groups provide free, Sistema-inspired orchestral...
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New Zealand-born and internationally raised
I am delighted to welcome writer Cileme Venkateswar to anthropod. This is the third post in my series on doing fieldwork with kids, and in it Cileme (who I introduced in Part II of this series)...
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