Western Anthropology 7th Annual Graduate Student Conference

As a discipline seeking to understand how people (past and present) navigate their social worlds in different ways, anthropologists emphasize alternate and marginalized perspectives. However, these perspectives and voices do not just co-exist as singular entities: they also overlap, blur the lines, mix and mingle. Anthropologists are now increasingly looking for pluralities in their research, for cases that challenge mindsets favouring “the singular" or “the straightforward”. Polyvocal approaches can be applied in theory and practice to highlight these complexities, yet we still grapple with establishing methodologies that truly capture the diversities we find in the field. 

The Western Anthropology Graduate Society (WAGS) would like to invite you to participate in our 7^th Annual Graduate Student Conference. Graduate and undergraduate students are welcome to present research that features, favours, or critiques multiplicities in theory, ethnography, methodology, and knowledge mobilization. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Equality and societal change 
• Interdisciplinary and community collaboration

• Migration, displacement, and diversity 
• Multilingualism and communication 
• Human/non-human relationships 
• Positionalities and power 
• Essentialism and pluralism in ethnographic writing 

• Multiplicities in theory and in practice 
• Material entanglements