These guidelines were co-created by Anthropology and Humanism and Allegra Lab.Anyone can review creative anthropology. The review process for creative work doesn’t rely on every reviewer having technical knowledge of the genre. It involves engaging at a subjective and experiential level, as well as via a rigorous scholarly lens you might be more used to. Peer reviewing creative anthropological work is an invitation—a kind of meeting place where thought and form intertwine, opening space not just for critique but for mutual imagination. (Read here to learn more about the philosophical underpinnings and politics of creative review). A good review is also a care review. Care is operationalized through thinking together; that is, thinking with the author instead of against them—a collaboration of sorts that moves against the grain of judgemental, evaluative forms of review. Creative anthropology thrives on exploration, and so should your review – but how?
HOW TO READ, HOW TO RESPOND, HOW TO REVIEW
To provide a formative, engaged review, there are multiple layers that you might want to consider, each offering a different way to evaluate, understand, and respond to the piece. This multi-layered approach allows you to appreciate the work’s richness and the intentions behind it, while also providing constructive feedback that helps the creator refine and develop their ideas. In the below section we break down five of these layers: including the experiential, scholarly, anthropological, subject expert, and technical layers.
A review can aim to use associative thinking, a way of drawing connections—between ideas, concepts, or experiences, or with other art, scholarly work, or popular culture—that may not be immediately obvious but help to illuminate the work in a new light. Asking questions of the author/creator is also a valuable strategy, in order to shift into this mode. What might you suggest the author themselves reflect on, in order to advance the piece? Can you distinguish between major comments that you think are essential for the success of the piece, and more open-ended reflections? We ask the reviewer to look at the text as a creative endeavour that is open to diverse readings, meaning there is less focus on giving the author things to fix, correct or add, and more focus on assisting the author to walk this creative process of revision by sharing ideas or asking questions.
The Experiential Layer
The first layer through which you might engage with a creative piece you have been asked to review is as a person, and a reader. This could also be described as a ‘humanistic’ lens. This is about your immediate impression—what you feel, sense, or think upon your initial encounter.
Questions to consider:
- What parts stood out as unique, striking, or memorable, within this piece? What was compelling, fresh, or made you gasp?
- What kept your attention as you went through? Were there any places you stumbled, got distracted, or felt your attention drop out, and why do you think that was?
- Does the form or genre feel intentional and justified? Would the piece have the same impact if it were presented in another medium?
- How does the chosen form or genre shape your understanding of the topic, story, people, or setting it is communicating about ?
- What overall themes emerged as most significant to you?
- What associations did it stir for you? Did it remind you of other pieces of art, scholarship, or popular culture?
- What ideas or feelings stuck with you after you finished reading (i.e. later that day, or later that week?)? Did it spark any particular reflections, or prompt any further questions?
Consider the impact of the creative genre, medium, or form used, not based on your technical experience with that genre, but rather your experience as a reader. It is crucial that the associations from thinking with this layer are communicated back to the creator in an accessible way: by using language and references that are understandable and directly relevant.
The Scholarly Layer
Moving beyond the initial impact, the next layer focuses on how this piece has fulfilled some of the basic criteria of scholarly work: some might be fulfilled in a slightly different way than they are in more standard scholarly texts. But to be taken seriously as part of academic praxis, it has to still hold to ethical standards, and standards of scholarly rigour.
Questions to consider:
- Does it have clear citations for particular ideas, quotes, or pieces of data, where these are perhaps needed?
- Does it leave you with an understanding of the methods, methodologies or forms of data and analysis that are behind the piece’s creation?
- What basis is there for the truth claims it is making?
- Does it provide appropriate credit for different contributors or authors?
- Do you get a sense of it being aware of, respectful of, and engaged in, existing dialogues or debates among other relevant scholars?
- What other scholars work, or pieces of (contemporary or seminal) scholarship, does it call to mind for you?
- Does it show thoughtful attention to the representational ethics of who they are speaking for, or about, and in what ways they are representing them?
Your feedback around this helps ensure that the piece maintains a balance between creative expression and scholarly responsibility. To help it become something that can also be cited, taught, or referenced, as a valid form of academic knowledge-making and knowledge-sharing.
The Anthropological Layer
This layer of reading focuses on whether the piece fulfils the goals and expectations of the discipline of anthropology, specifically. It might involve focusing on how it resonated with you as an anthropologist (or someone at least familiar with the tenets of that discipline): for example, assessing how well the work engages with ethnographic data, fieldwork experiences, and anthropological theories.
Questions to consider:
- Does the piece describe and evoke, in a detailed, vivid and textured way, and with a sense of wholeness? Does it offer a sense of ‘being there’?
- What scope or scale is it either describing? How specific and situated, or broad-brush and generalised, are the claims?
- How effectively does the work convey context? Did it leave you with a critical awareness of the place and time: the political, geographic, economic, social, or cultural setting in which the topic or moment is described occurs?
- In what way does it try to offer emic/insider perspectives or insights to a given social world? In what way does it offer etic/outsider perspectives on insights? From what positionality (of the author)?
- What voice is the author using (subjective or objective, insider or outsider)? Where does the sense of authority, insight, or expertise come from?
- Can you sense the presence of the fieldwork (and the fieldworker) within the work?
- In what ways does it communicate or acknowledge the collaborative and situated processes of anthropological sense-making and knowledge production, as an appropriately reflexive way?
- Did you notice the piece engage with seminal or contemporary anthropological theories, concepts, or debates?
Not all pieces necessarily need to do all of the above in an overt or typical way. But this layer asks for deeper, more critical engagement with the work, ensuring that the creative piece is not only aesthetically compelling but also rooted in the unique sensibilities and values that define anthropology as a discipline.
The Subject Expert Layer
In some cases you may have been asked to review based on expertise or interest in a particular subject that the author addresses in the piece; for example, a geographic region, particular population/demographic/community, or a field; a theoretical lens or focus; a certain subfield of anthropology. If so, you should consider next, how well you feel the piece speaks to or about that particular subject area, based on your own expert knowledge; either of the field directly (through your own fieldwork or research praxis) or of contemporary scholarship in this area.
Questions to consider:
- What is the main point about this topic that you think the author/creator is trying to make? Can you identify it? How clearly is it made?
- Are the understandings of this piece/place/setting/phenomenon represented in this piece, to the best of your knowledge, accurate and up-to-date?
- Is the piece saying something about this subject area that is new and interesting? Or presenting something already known in a new and fresh way, that justifies it as an original contribution?
- Does the piece acknowledge the wider conversation, or place itself in dialogue with others (either implicitly or explicitly)?
- How does the piece relate itself to existing ideas (existing studies, existing theory) in this scholarly area? Does it agree and confirm? Expand and add? Critique or contest? Reframe or subvert?
- Were there any spots you felt confused or unclear about what was being communicated, or where you felt it risked miscommunicating a key element?
- What is the potential impact of this piece? On the subject field? On scholars? On the people/communities in question? On wider publics? On specific stakeholders? What value does it hold?
Not every reviewer is asked to review based on their subject expertise. If you are not comfortable with speaking to the exact topic or case study, you can still provide useful comments on the other layers.
The Technical Layer
A final layer to consider is how effectively the piece uses the techniques of the specific genre it has chosen (e.g. poetry, fiction, visuality) to make its point or communicate its story. Not every reviewer is asked to review based on their expertise of the genre. If you are not comfortable or familiar with the genre itself, you can still provide useful comments on the other layers. Each genre has its own conventions and techniques, so we cannot really provide questions to help you think this through in the same way, but in general you might start with:
- What are the unique conventions, forms, or techniques that are associated with this author/creator’s chosen genre? Do they show an awareness of and respect for these?
- Is there a clear purpose behind the choice of genre? What relationship is there between the content or focus of the piece, and the chosen genre? Does it help make the author’s point, or fulfil the author’s purpose, in some specific way?
- How does the piece work with the norms or conventions of their chosen genre? Does it adhere to them, subvert them, or blend them in (new) experimental ways?
- Do they show skill and mastery in using specific techniques common to this genre or medium? Which do they use well, and which could be developed further?
- Are there any places in the text that they show a particularly strong or effective use of some skill or technique?
- Are there any places in the text where the techniques are not working as well, or where improvement could be made?
- Are there any small details that you are finding disruptive or distracting?
USEFUL STUFF TO REMEMBER
Peer review, especially for creative work, is a way of breathing life into the practice of feedback—of inviting dialogue rather than prescribing fixes. It’s less about judgement and more about fostering a space where work can resonate, catch light, shift shape. The task here isn’t to refine or correct but to engage openly with the textures of the work, to notice where it lands, where it surprises, where it might wander or pause. This approach allows us to sidestep the urge to perfect, instead inviting the work to reach deeper or perhaps to tilt its gaze.
The material will eventually pass through a copy-editing process, so there’s no need to zero in on every grammatical or punctuation detail. Yet if certain turns of phrase, rhythms, or visual choices stand out—whether as points of clarity, disorientation, or beauty—this can be worth noting. Sharing your impressions without feeling the urge to “correct” creates room for the author to feel into their own choices and consider how they work, or don’t, in this moment. In this way, creative peer review becomes a practice of honouring and engaging with the work as it is, while gently probing its possibilities.
Let feedback be a way of seeing, not shaping; a way of listening, not correcting.
These guidelines were collectively created by:
Priyanka Borpujari
Ian M. Cook
Çiçek İlengiz
Fiona Murphy
Julia Offen
Johann Sander Puustusmaa
Eva van Roekel
Richard Thornton
Susan Wardellphoto by Ian M. Cook