According to the AAA, anthropology is defined as the study of what makes us human. In accordance with its broad definition, the field of anthropology is incredibly diverse, and part of its charm is that a background in anthropology can be applicable to practically any situation. However, this versatility can be problematic for students who are trying to imagine what a future in the field of anthropology would look like—both within and outside academia. My desire to explore career possibilities in anthropology lead me to a chance encounter in the classroom with Miia Halme-Tuomisaari. She introduced me to the possibility of working with Allegra Lab during my semester abroad in Helsinki. While interning with Allegra Lab, I’ve helped with the Twitter feed, fixed broken links, and worked on the search engine optimization of posts. Through my exposure to Allegra’s content and interviews with members of the Allegra editorial team, I have been able to expand my idea of what is possible in anthropology. Looking on the web, however, I felt that there was not much advice out there for aspiring anthropologists.
This thematic thread features helpful posts for anthropologists, and I hope that it will encourage anthropologists to share their experiences and the lessons they learned along the way. Use the hashtag #Anthroadvice to share your advice on Twitter!
Our thematic thread starts off with Ghassan Hage‘s post, “How to interact with theory while writing your PhD,” which was first published on his blog in 2015. He offers helpful tips and analogies for thinking about and interacting with theory. Our next two posts will be from the Allegra archives. In the first post from 2014, Jessika Tremblay shares her tips for fieldwork and blogging. Drawn from her own experience of running a fieldwork blog, she discusses the benefits of blogging and how it has helped her research. The next post contains publishing tips for PhD students from Luke Heslop. It was first published in 2016, and provides tips for publishing articles while writing a thesis. Our last post of the week features an interview with Jon Schubert, Allegra Lab’s new Director of Outreach. I interviewed him about topics such as what drew him to anthropology and his new position at Allegra Lab.
