AMHIG held its annual business meeting last week in Vancouver during the American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings. We have some updates and exciting plans for the coming year to share with everyone here.
- After several years of service, Michael Duke has stepped down as co-chair of AMHIG. Erica Fletcher has stepped forward to serve with me as co-chair. We are extremely grateful for her willingness to serve and are very excited to move forward. Thank you Michael for everything you have done for AMHIG over the years. THANK YOU Erica for agreeing to co-chairing with me! I look forward to a successful partnership!
- Erica is starting a Google group for our group and will be re-vamping the AMHIG website. PLEASE STAY TUNED as the google group will probably become our primary method of communication. Once the link is available we will share it here so people may subscribe.
- After the success of the AMHIG-sponsored blog series, this year we would like to continue sponsoring blog posts by AMHIG members. We would like to work with an existing Anthropology blog (outlets mentioned were anthrodendum, Sapiens, this anthro life, and The New Ethnographer) and will be researching an appropriate partnership in the coming months.
- Kristin Yarris suggested also starting an Anthropology of Mental Health podcast series. We all agreed using an existing podcast such as Anthropologist on the Street, Anthropod, or Sapiens would be better than trying to launch our own series. We will be researching and trying to find a venue over the next few weeks and months.
- We will once again offer a travel award next year.
- Other ideas we would like to pursue:
- An AMHIG-sponsored roundtable on Trauma and ethnographic fieldwork building off the Anthrodendum series at the AAAs (Rebecca Lester, would you be interested in co-organizing?)
- A Policy brief or statement on mental health in anthropology, particularly speaking to graduate student mental health (including important factors such as poverty, food and housing security, and toxic academic culture) –would love to know if anyone would like to work on this with us.
- Reaching out the the Anthropologists Action Nertwork for Immigrant Rights (AANIR) for possible partnership and collaboration.
Stay tuned over the next weeks and months as we begin moving our agenda forward. We are very excited and energized and look forward to seeing what 2020 will have in store for AMHIG.
I think that is all for now! I hope everyone had an enjoyable break last week and wish an uneventful end of the semester.