Teaching Anthropology

An Introduction to Trauma-Informed Teaching in Anthropology

William Tantam — 2024-12-11

This editorial introduces the significance of a trauma-informed approach for teaching and learning in anthropology. It will provide an overview of key terms relating to trauma, and how these might apply to anthropological teaching and learning contexts. It also considers what these teaching contexts might reveal about trauma-informed approaches, drawing on conversations with colleagues from across different institutions into their experiences working with trauma. It identifies the centrality of trust and control in reflecting the needs of participants and students.

This collection brings together pieces from anthropologists working at different academic career stages: from those writing up PhD fieldwork to those reflecting on longer teaching and research engagements with trauma. The issue also comprises of work on very different ethnographic contexts including the UK, Greece, Italy, South Africa, Palestine, and Lebanon. This heterogeneity illustrates the usefulness of trauma as a lens through which to interpret multiple forms of experience, whether considering how to teach students about challenging topics, engage with those who have experienced trauma, or make sense of how to navigate our own experiences. Overall, it suggests that conversations around how to work with trauma need to be had with others - between students, colleagues, departments, and institutions.

Keywords: Trauma, vicarious trauma, historical trauma, trauma-informed approaches

Trauma and Emotion in Decolonising Anthropology

Trudi Buck — 2024-12-11

Teaching a module entitled ‘Decolonising Anthropology’ means having to approach numerous difficult and challenging subjects with students. It also means having to respond to and reflect on the traumatic responses that these topics bring about in individuals. During classes in this module, on the use of human remains in biological anthropology, students have become overwhelmed by the subject matter and removed themselves from the laboratory. Students have also expressed anxiety and feelings of uncertainty due to the assessment of this module, where we encourage the production of alternative assessment types and learning outcomes as a reaction to traditional essay style submissions. This paper highlights the impact of learning about decolonising the curriculum and challenging traditional pedagogical approaches on undergraduate students studying anthropology. Reflections from students will be discussed, including transformative feelings from overwhelm to having constructive conversations about unsettling and unfamiliar topics, the juxtaposition of conventional academic thoughts against personal emotions and narratives, and how thinking about decolonising anthropology has been an unsettling experience. Personal reflection will be given to how such ‘risky teaching’ (Harrison et al., 2023) can help create more effective teaching and learning within the discipline and help develop a trauma-informed pedagogy for anthropology.

Keywords: Pedagogy; Decolonising; Trauma; Reflective.

Performing Ethnography: From Dissonance to Resonance in Teaching Anthropology in China

Xinyan Peng — 2025-05-20

In the Gender, Culture, and Society undergraduate course at a mainland Chinese university, an instructor had her students perform Emily Martin’s The Woman in the Body (2001) to engage their own embodied experience in an anthropology class. To clarify the epistemological significance of this pedagogical innovation, the instructor engaged in a three-year dialogue with her Chinese collaborator regarding her teaching experience. This collaboratively written article drawing on one author’s classroom ethnography and extensive discussions on pedagogical innovations, examines how dissonance –defined here as readers’ interpretative gaps when engaging with an ethnographic text –can be transformed into resonance –readers’ embodied engagement with the text –through a dramaturgical approach to teaching anthropology inspired by the work of Victor and Edith Turner, (e.g. performing ethnography). In mobilising Chinese students to perform ethnography, the frictions between the sociocultural context of the text and their own experiences were made apparent. By engaging with the text in an embodied manner, the students experienced a transformation from dissonance to resonance, and their subsequent discussions fostered reflexivity and empathy. Inspired by the Turners’ theoretical framework and dramaturgically oriented pedagogy, performing ethnography constitutes one of several pedagogical innovations that are urgently needed to re-evaluate anthropological education. We posit that students’ dissonance with ethnographic texts provides a foundation for pedagogical innovation. By transforming the classroom into a theatrical space –an experimental site for both ethnographic fieldwork and theoretical as well as methodological reflection –this approach contributes significantly to anthropological knowledge production.

From Roots to Digital Realms: Jordan Jamieson on Revitalising Indigenous Culture through Archaeology and Technology

Sacha Samouk — 2025-04-29

This interview with Jordan Jamieson explores the intersections of archaeology, technology, and the revitalisation of Indigenous cultural practices. With over ten years of experience in archaeology and cultural resource management (CRM), Jamieson reflects on the role of his upbringing in a community actively reclaiming its cultural practices and situates his work within wider trends towards decolonising archaeology in Canada. The interview begins with an overview of Jamieson’s own story and how those formative experiences have led him to where he is now advocating for Indigenous perspectives in archaeology. He stresses the positive potential of technology — particularly its ability to challenge the androcentric, colonial structures that have often been imposed on the discipline.

This interview examines tools like virtual reality, digital archives and 3D printing, and how these tools are used to preserve cultural heritage, by rematriating artefacts and engaging youth in Indigenous knowledge through cultural education. In addition to promoting community-based archaeological standards and procedures formed by Indigenous voices, Jamieson draws attention to the ethical concerns associated with digitisation, including ownership, authenticity, and accessibility. For the purpose of cultural preservation, he places a strong emphasis on the role that young people play as guardians of their emerging traditions and knowledge systems. This interview broadens the discussion of archaeology to include cultural themes, engaging readers beyond the traditional archaeological audience. The conversation also explores the roles of music, storytelling, and the creation of new spiritual spaces in cultural revitalisation. For Jamieson, technology is a tool that bridges traditional knowledge and modern innovation, creating a deeper connection to Indigenous heritage and inspiring collective learning and empowerment for generations to come. This interview offers a compelling narrative for readers interested in the evolving intersections of archaeology, culture, and technology through decolonisation.

Challenging the Canon: BIPOC Scholarship at the Syllabi Core

Mary Sundal — 2025-02-04

This paper focuses on pedagogical changes to decolonize an upper-division Anthropology of Women course to focus on BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour) scholarly representation, thus challenging the anthropological canon. I will discuss the pedagogical redesign and implementation of the class—from its associated course description, required readings, and instructional and assessment activities—that I modeled after the Cite Black Women collective’s guiding principles to teach courses with BIPOC scholarship and representation at the syllabi core. Finally, the paper will explore teaching strategies to challenge academic canons that historically have excluded BIPOC scholarship.

Value Propositions Provide a Roadmap for Teaching Doctoral Students How to Develop Research Proposals:

Alissa Ruth — 2025-03-24

Writing winning proposals for funding research is an essential skill for doctoral students in the social sciences. Still, most anthropology programs lack formal instruction on this, relying instead on informal mentorship. To advance this, we evaluated the Value Proposition framework in teaching anthropology Ph.D. students to write proposals. Our findings from the feedback from students and faculty in the NSF-funded Cultural Anthropology Methods Program (CAMP) offer insights for using this framework to bridge the proposal-writing gap in the training of cultural anthropologists.

What Does It Mean to Teach Trauma-Informed Anthropology?

Caitlin Procter — 2024-12-11

This Teaching Brief is an extended discussion on the findings presented in our article ‘Field of Screams Revisited: Contending with trauma in ethnographic fieldwork’ (Procter, Spector and Freed, this Special Issue). In the article, we report on a survey on the fieldwork experiences of 43 anthropologists. The survey sought to understand the kinds of trauma exposure experienced by anthropologists; the ways in which researchers were affected by this exposure both during and after fieldwork; and the support they received – or would have benefitted from – to anticipate, prevent and mitigate this. In summary, analysis of the survey led to the following core findings: first, that trauma exposure is a feature of many fieldwork experiences whether or not the fieldwork takes place in a violent or chaotic setting. Second, that there are notable gaps in the skills, preparedness and support of researchers who are exposed to trauma in the course of their fieldwork. Third, that encounters with trauma, even if ‘only’ vicarious trauma, during fieldwork can have significant adverse impact on researchers, which in turn has an impact on the overall quality and integrity of the research produced as a result of the fieldwork. Finally, we shared findings on how researchers coped with the difficulties they had faced, including levels of support received from departments and supervisors (more than half of respondents who felt able to share the challenges they had faced doing fieldwork with their supervisors or other senior academics felt that their concerns had been downplayed or dismissed). Taken together, it appears that many aspects of the fieldwork preparation experience are not sufficiently trauma-informed, and that this is detrimental both to the wellbeing of some researchers and to the quality of research produced. In this Teaching Brief, and in the style set out by this journal, we offer educators a series of questions to reflect on in order to move towards a trauma-informed anthropology, prompted by the findings of this survey.

Field of Screams Revisited: Contending with Trauma in Ethnographic Fieldwork

Caitlin Procter — 2024-12-11

This article explores ways that trauma can come into tension with anthropological methods, specifically during fieldwork. It is based on findings from a survey conducted among anthropologists in 2023, which sought to understand preparation for fieldwork, including personal preparation, formal support and the ethics process; fieldwork experiences, including forms of trauma exposure and other aspects of context which may have heightened vulnerability or reactivity to traumatic stressors; researcher responses to accumulated distress of fieldwork; and finally, how supervisory relationships and institutional culture shape and influence researchers’ experience. We suggest that by looking at fieldwork experiences through the lens of trauma, we can achieve a rich and specific understanding of the extent to which this is an issue within the discipline. Doing so can enable us to think constructively about moving towards a trauma-informed anthropology.

Key Words: Fieldwork; trauma exposure; vicarious trauma; training; supervision; institutional culture

Anthropology’s Need for Trauma-Informed Approaches: Recognising the Prevalence of Trauma, Navigating its Impacts, and Considerations for Teaching.

William Tantam — 2024-12-11

Traumatic experiences are prevalent across all cultures and all Higher Education contexts will almost certainly have survivors of trauma in the classroom as students or teachers. Focusing on the UK Higher Education context, this article draws on data indicating the rates of traumatic experiences among UK University populations in order to demonstrate the need for a trauma-informed approach to teaching anthropology. It goes on to show the ways in which anthropologists have worked with trauma and those who have experienced trauma in order to develop an anthropological interpretation of trauma-informed practices. Trauma-informed approaches centre the needs of survivors in the provision of services. Through reflecting on techniques for teaching a session on ‘child sexual abuse and trauma,’ I consider practical solutions for teaching challenging topics in ways that diminish possibilities of retraumatisation and vicarious traumatisation.

Workaround as Practice: Gauging Risk in Ethnographic Method

Ava Muhr — 2024-12-11

This reflection questions how “trauma-informed anthropology” as a method and reflexive praxis undergirding fieldwork evolves: How do attempts to mitigate re-traumatisation shape the meanings of the relationship between researcher and interlocutor? Issues of vicarious trauma are similarly near-impossible to anticipate, and there are few existing structures in place to aid researchers during their fieldwork, particularly as it isolates them from existing structures of care in their own lives. In the steps we have both taken to ensure our safety and that of our interlocutors, we ask: Does the workaround then become part of the practice?

Keywords: Trauma, method, positionality, risk, interviews, ethnography.