Based on the inaugural workshop “Collaborations and Contestations in Publicly Engaged Anthropologies”, a special issue of the journal Public Anthropologist was published in November 2023 under the same title. In addition to an introductory article by co-editors Olaf Zenker and Asta Vonderau, it brings together seven articles that explore in different ways the various potentials and pitfalls of collaborative research in the context of publicly engaged anthropologies. 

Through detailed case studies on multilingual encounters and affective collaborative ambiguities in the context of the so-called “refugee crisis” of 2015, antiracist networks, child protection programmes, activists on tea plantations, among homeless persons, and anti-genderist arguments in academic contexts, the authors discuss the intense forms of sympathy and solidarity, but also the professional and ethical-political challenges and even direct confrontations that can arise from collaborative work within public anthropology. 

The special issue is thus a first important contribution of the network to critically reflect on the practices and conditions of publics-oriented academic research and work in both anthropologies.

Link to the Special Issue