"Forty years ago, George Marcus and Michael Fischer declared the 1980s an "experimental moment in the human sciences,” urging anthropologists and other human scientists to rethink ethnography as a site not only of representation but of intervention, invention, and critique. Today, in the context of ecological crisis, political rupture, technological transformation, and epistemic reordering, we ask: what does experiment mean today?
This conference invites scholars to reflect on experiment as both object and mode of anthropological inquiry. How do anthropologists collaborate, compose, and critique in experimental ways? What does it mean to “experiment” with form, with method, with theory, or with the infrastructures of scholarly work? And how might experiment be situated—ethically, politically, historically—in relation to those whose lives and knowledge we engage?"
Questions? Email: AESConference2026@outlook.com