Research Team Seminars in Anthropology

The School for Advanced Research (SAR), celebrating its 115th anniversary this year, has a longstanding commitment to support research that advances knowledge about anthropology and related disciplines that includes human culture, evolution, and history. NSF/SAR research team seminars benefit the field of anthropology by providing important opportunities for in-person collaborative interdisciplinary research, given the lack of resources to bring busy scholars together for an extended time that is free of everyday professional responsibilities.

Supporting both existing and new research teams of scholars with in-person focused, uninterrupted time to discuss, synthesize, and analyze results of their collaborative research, this project facilitates plans for successful completion, expansion, and development of new projects that benefit and enrich the field of anthropology. This project also supports the NSF’s goals of building scientific infrastructure through collaboration and increasing understanding of the causes, consequences, and complexities of human social and cultural variability.

This project addresses the advancement of collaborative, interdisciplinary, and international research in anthropology by an in-person team of scholars. The project also increases discovery and understanding, as well as the quality and importance of the products resulting from this type of research framework. With NSF funding, the School for Advanced Research (SAR), an advanced research center for anthropology and allied disciplines located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, implements two research team seminars in cultural anthropology over the course of the award.

Eligible research teams have a primary focus on a question of anthropological importance that is timely and addresses a specific need. Seminars are selected by an expert panel of SAR staff and external scholars through an annual competition. For each seminar, NSF funding covers all travel, lodging, meals, and other related costs to meet at SAR.

Organizers of the research team seminars are expected to develop a meeting schedule in advance and provide SAR with a report after the seminar concludes that describes activities and results, including plans for new research, publications in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes, and conference presentations.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.