About Us
The NEAA or Northeastern Anthropological Society, was founded in 1961. Since then, the organization has evolved into a vibrant community of scholars and professionals and students whose annual rite of conference is a wonderful chance to meet, talk, and exchange views. We welcome you to our effort.
Executive Board
NEAA President
NEAA President-Elect
NEAA Past President
Secretary
Treasurer
Board Member At Large
2023 Annual Meeting Program Chair
2022 Annual Meeting Co-Chair
2022 Annual Meeting Co-Chair
Alumni Liaison
Website/Membership Coordinator
Archivist
Undergraduate Student Representative
Graduate Student Representative
NEAA President’s Message
Welcome to the new NEAA website!
We are thrilled to share the launch of our freshly redesigned and updated website! Doesn’t it look GREAT? The redesign could not have happened without Michael Zimmerman. Thank you, Michael, for your vision, energy, and dedication to making this happen. Also, thank you to Angela Labrador for her expertise and continued support of the NEAA in digital spaces.
The NEAA is excited to announce our 2024 conference will return to Rhode Island College (RIC) in Providence, Rhode Island, April 12-14. The NEAA Conference welcomes scholars and applied practitioners in all subfields of anthropology and related disciplines doing ethnographic, qualitative, and quantitative research, along with creative approaches in research methodology and reporting. We believe this will be an enriching environment for sharing work. I always learn so much at the conference and leave it loving anthropology even more.
For those of you I haven’t yet met, I have been involved with the NEAA since I started teaching. It was such an important organization for me as it offered support for my new teaching career and opportunities to learn to become a better teacher and mentor. It was a place where I knew my students could showcase their work in a nurturing environment. When I first joined, Executive Committee members were warm and welcoming to me, and NEAA members have been and continue to be valuable colleagues. I remember the leadership of Michael Ennis-McMillan (Skidmore College) and being so impressed with his students’ senior projects and presentations that I hoped someday my own students could present their original research. Since then, many Roger Williams University students have taken advantage of the professional development opportunities offered by NEAA academic conferences.
We are dedicated to the NEAA continuing to welcome all anthropologists and people doing ethnographic research—professors in the classrooms, applied anthropologists, NEAA alumni, and students throughout their academic journeys, and people doing creative expressions of research too. If you are a faculty member thinking of bringing your students to present or to just see what it is all about, we welcome you. If you are a student coming to present for the first time, we promise this will be a supportive place for your presentation. If you are a seasoned veteran of the conference, welcome back! We would love for you to contact us to become even more involved.
The Executive Board recognizes the last few years have been difficult for many people and that many of our members continue to work through challenges. As an organization, we have navigated the last several years as best we could. At times this meant shifting to a virtual conference format or hosting a spring talk instead of the conference to accommodate a changing meeting landscape. We believe that the launch of the organization’s new, user-friendly website is a significant step toward ensuring the longevity of the Northeastern Anthropological Association. We maintain our dedication to undergraduate students and serving scholars and professionals by offering an intimate setting for sharing work and engaging in the kinds of networking opportunities only a small, regional organization can offer. We will continue to evaluate what we can do better to position the organization for the future. Two initiatives that are already underway: reexamining our organization’s practices and reaching out to partner with other organizations. In addition, you will see below this message our organization’s action plan committing to diversity, equity, and inclusion within the NEAA and our home institutions.
Please come along for the ride!
Jessica Skolnikoff
NEAA President
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Action Plan
The NEAA Board is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion work as an ongoing dialogue and evolving plan of action. We are strongly aware that these efforts are more complex than simply writing a statement, so we commit to an action plan for creating sustainable practices to ensure the NEAA is accountable to DEI work now and in the future.
Objectives:
Examine and acknowledge our own individual pasts and privileges along with those in the discipline of anthropology. All our work has been and will continue to be seated in those pasts.
Encourage all members of the NEAA, if applicable, to re-examine their own work and how it intersects with others, especially in the classroom, and how we can be DEI change agents and disruptors of the exclusionary systems and practices with which we engage.
Craft conferences that are increasingly inclusive of all people interested in anthropology, and which center on the tenets of Universal Design.
First Actions:
We will continue to acknowledge the Indigenous land that the NEAA occupies at our conferences and the Indigenous land of the institutions that participate in the NEAA while also working to support the participation of Indigenous scholars.
We plan to review our membership through the lens of DEI and examine how we maintain and seek out new members to expand the inclusion of students, researchers, and practitioners who have been historically marginalized in the discipline.
We will maintain a supportive environment at our conference for students and faculty to try out new ideas as a starting point for creating more inclusive spaces for dialogue.
At our annual conference, we will seek out and make space for awareness and support for DEI work in anthropology and other disciplines through teaching, scholarship, and research, beginning with emphasizing the importance of universal design for presentations.
The NEAA Board understands that while work is currently being done at multiple levels in all disciplines, many anthropologists have been doing forms of this work for decades. It is those anthropologists we wish to emulate, while also acknowledging the harm our field has caused. We acknowledge that dismantling systems of white supremacy, ableism, patriarchy, and heteronormativity, especially within our own communities, disciplines and institutions, is a never-ending process, and, above all, one that must result in tangible change.
We are in the process of developing one-, three-, five- and ten-year plans to move this commitment forward, fully realizing the work will have to be deliberate, consistent, flexible, and responsive.
Sincerely,
NEAA Executive Board