The 2024 NEAA Annual Meeting
Rhode Island College, Providence, RI: April 12-13, 2024
NEAA 2024 Annual Meeting
The Northeastern Anthropological Association is pleased to welcome our presenters, session chairs and guests to our 2024 annual meeting at Rhode Island College in Providence, RI from April 12-13, 2024. Registration for conference attendance is still open, but we have concluded our submissions of posters, presentations and sessions. The conference agenda can be viewed by all conference registrants by logging into ConfTool by using this link, and clicking on “Browse Conference Agenda.” A PDF copy of the Annual Meeting Program will also be posted on this website as soon as it is available.
We are back and in person! To make the 2024 meetings accessible to all—and to attract as many new and past attendees as possible—the NEAA is underwriting the cost of the conference this year. Registration and the banquet for professionals is only $80 and for students a low $40.
The annual meeting invites students, undergraduate and graduate, scholars and practicing anthropologists to share their research in a multidisciplinary setting that relates to the topic of that year and to contemporary issues in anthropology, such as “Finding the Good Path: Resolving Fundamental Ethics Issues in Anthropology.”
This year’s theme is:
Repairing and Caring
Working and Advocating in the Present
Anthropology is a vibrant discipline of complex relationships undergoing endless change. As the discipline navigates serious changes and challenges in the turbulent twenty-first century, it inevitably faces the simultaneous need for critical reflection and rethinking, but also a growing commitment to renewed visions of repair and care. This repair and care labor comes in various forms. For example, there are significant shifts in research focus and curriculum design that fundamentally change what anthropologists do, what they teach, and how they relate to a world of increasing uncertainty. There are realignments of values and reinforcement of core values in response to complex social, environmental, and political economic matters of concern. We are also a discipline always pressed to rethink and remake our relevance in the present, especially amidst emerging movements to even decolonize science in general and social sciences in particular to make our work more closely aligned with global justice struggles. Additionally, all this repair and care work is, of course, embedded in an enduring focus in anthropology to be mindful of and openly critique the disciplines own contentious colonial history. We also know that communities everywhere are grappling with overlapping crises—ecological, political, social—and so any repair and care work today confronts the porosity of boundaries and intersectionalities of crisis, as well as the broader cultural and geopolitical dimensions of our anthropological perspectives and practices. We need to be at the center of these critical discussions and practices of repair and care because they matter to anthropology and our allied sciences and organizations, and to the actual communities we work in and advocate for.
Let’s come together for the NEAA’s annual meeting April 12-13 at Rhode Island College to rethink anthropology in a world that needs more (not less) attention to meaningful repair and care!
How to Participate and Join the Conversation
The NEAA meeting is open to everyone (faculty, students, partnering organizations and advocacy groups, artists, etc.) and we strongly encourage your participation, either as a paper presenter, panel organizer and/or discussant, an artist anthropologist wishing to share your creative work, an organizer of a film viewing and discussion, or as a member of an organization wishing to share the work you do and how anthropologists might get involved! Working and advocating in the present is extremely diverse, so let’s ensure that the 2024 NEAA meeting reflects that diversity!!
While all anthropological topics are relevant to working and advocating in the present, those interested in submitting a paper/panel/artistic work/etc. can use the following list of topics to guide their ideas for submission:
Social scientists engaging ethnographic research methods
Engaged, advocacy, and applied anthropology
Decolonization and social science
Anthropology, museums, and critical heritage studies
Anthropology and interdisciplinarity
Anthropology of intersectionality
Global social and environmental movements
Anthropology and LGBTQ+ studies
Institutions and inequality
Environmental justice
Anthropology and climate change
Anthropology and capitalism today
Anthropology and disaster studies
Anthropology and disability studies
Technology and data justice studies
Futures and alternative paths of inquiry, action, and praxis
Partnerships and solidarity
Anthropology of care and radical care
Anthropology of repair, restoration, and repatriation
Social and environmental injustice and reparations
Social science knowledge and meaningful action
Meet Our Keynote Speaker
We are also thrilled to welcome our keynote speaker for the 2024 NEAA Annual Meeting at Rhode Island College, Hilda Lloréns of the University of Rhode Island. Dr. Lloréns is an associate professor at URI, having earned her doctorate in anthropology from the University of Connecticut in 2005. She is cultural anthropologist and a scholar centered on decolonizing practices, with a focus on how racial and gender inequality manifest itself in cultural production, nation building, access to environmental resources, and exposure to environmental degradation. Dr. Lloréns’ research has been centrally concerned with critiquing structural inequalities and dismantling taken for granted notions of power. At URI, she teaches core courses in anthropology, such as Anthropological Theory, Language & Culture, Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Latinas/Latinos/Latinxs, and Gender & Culture, among others. Her list of publications is extensive, including her 2014 book, Imaging The Great Puerto Rican Family: Framing Nation, Race, and Gender during the American Century, and her 2021 book, Making Livable Worlds: Afro-Puerto Rican Women Building Environmental Justice, for which she won the Gregory Bateson and Frank Bonilla Book prizes; her articles on anti-racist praxis and environmental justice issues are too numerous to mention here. The NEAA is honored to welcome her as our keynote speaker for the 2024 Annual Meeting.
Hotels and Restaurants in Providence
There are a number of hotels and restaurants within short distance of Rhode Island College. Please see below for information on hotels and restaurants, including distance from Rhode Island College. Click on the picture to go to the hotel or restaurant website.
Courtyard by Marriot Providence (10 minutes, 3.1 miles from conference)
Aloft Providence Downtown (13 minutes, 3.4 miles from conference)
Homewood Suites by Hilton Providence (11 minutes, 3.2 miles from conference)
Marriott Downtown Providence (8 minutes, 2.7 miles from conference)
Renaissance Downtown Providence (9 minutes, 2.6 miles from conference)
Omni Providence Hotel (9 minutes, 2.9 miles from conference)
Residence Inn Downtown Providence (11 minutes, 3.1 miles from conference)
Hilton Providence (11 minutes, 3.0 miles from conference)
The Dean Hotel (11 minutes, 3.2 miles from conference)
Rhode Island College Dining Services (Donovan Hall)
California Taco Shop (4 minutes, 1.0 miles from conference)
RIFFRAFF Cafe, Bookstore and Bar (9 minutes, 2.5 miles from conference)
Los Andes Peruvian & Bolivian Food (6 minutes, 1.7 miles from conference)
Rhode Island College is located in Providence, Rhode Island, accessible via interstates 95 and 295, and via public transportation. For a campus map, please access this link. Detailed directions to and from the campus may be found at this link.
Want to attend, but not interested in submitting a paper, poster or session? You can also use the button above to register for the conference!