The Geek Anthropologist is seeking qualified individuals to join our Editorial Board. As an Editor at TGA, responsibilities include: recruiting new contributors and content for the blog and assisting with the writing and editorial process for contributors, as well as writing your own pieces for TGA if you’re feeling inspired. You will also communicate regularly with other members of the Editorial Board and represent TGA at conferences, cons and ethnographic workshops.
We’re looking for Editors with some background and training in Anthropology, as well as experience in editing. That being said, you don’t necessarily have to have a PhD in Anthropology–it’s more important that you have a working knowledge of anthropological methods and theories, and an understanding of the major issues and conversations happening in anthropology today. Obviously, we’re also looking for self-identified geeks, those who are interested in blending a love of geek culture and anthropological insight, while challenging us to consider potentially new dimensions of geek anthropology. We have ongoing series in Speculative Anthropologies, Book Reviews, and Anthropologies of Outer Space, but we encourage new editors to bring issues and editorial directions to the blog as well, hopefully with a working knowledge of WordPress.
If you are interested in joining the Editorial team, and contributing to the TGA community, please send a short CV, a brief writing sample (ideally a blog post or something that would be read by a more public audience, rather than a peer reviewed journal article for instance), and a brief description about your interest in becoming an Editor with TGA to thegeekanthropologist@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you and to bringing on new members of the team!
The Geek Anthropologist 
[…] 2021 wasn’t quite the year we anticipated, nor does the conclusion of the year feel like it does justice to the warped sense of time, distance, and stasis we have perhaps felt in the Longue durée of COVID-19. Yet 2021 also gave us new ways to think about virtual presence and digital connection through Minecraft; the role of a mediated and mediatized grief in Wandavision; the Marxist politics underlying GameStop stock; the ongoing importance of centering repatriation in the practice of archaeology; and the bureaucratic magic of Loki. At TGA, we’re thankful for all the authors that contributed to our geeky anthropological community, as well as the contributors we’re hoping to feature in 2022. We hope you enjoyed these pieces from 2021 and remember that you can always pitch us in the year to come, or apply to join our growing Editorial Team. […]
LikeLike
When I began my blog, it was from a desire to communicate anthropological ways of thinking to wider audiences. After 30 years as an academic, it seemed not right that I was always writing super technical articles that maybe 300 people would read and maybe 50 would then cite. The money that’s gone into my training, the grants I’ve received, the salary that paid for my reading and thinking time, all deserved to be turned into better value for money and a wider engagement with the public. Also, I loved writing and was bored with producing academic articles. I was encouraged by NYU Abu Dhabi to blog about my part of their migration project; https://blogs.soas.ac.uk/osella-realm/en/ Working on that then slowly gave me the blog tech skills to set up my own site, where I’m trying to connect some very local hometown issues across to social science and ethnographic thinking. https://worthingethnographic.com/ At first, some of my local readers complained that the blog was too dense and academic, with too many hyperlinks, so I had to learn to keep things even more simple and more stripped down than I’d have wanted. I also learnt a lot about stuff like image compression and using tags mindfully. Now I’m getting there with it and reaching a range of people in UK and beyond. I try not to feel like I’m super diluting the intellectual work, but am actually sitting down with the people who live around me – or in places like my hometown – and making some sincere attempts at communication. Roll on that day when people know that, like the sociologists, psychologists, environmental scientists, medics and just about everybody, social anthropologists also have interesting things to offer.
My take on why more academics don’t do blogging? From UK, definitely a fair bit of intellectual snobbery and a certain pride in being part of a closed elite discourse. Re. Anthro., as anthropologists, we’ve a long tradition of creative experiments with the ethnographic form itself, which means that creativity could generally be satisfied within the strictures of tenure, SCOPUS and Google H ratings etc. My blog never counted in any way towards professional development, salary, promotion, standing or reputation. It was, I think, for colleagues, a weird little grad-studentish thing that I chose to do. ( When I could have used that precious time to churn out a prestigious peer reviewed paper). Glad to be in your company!
LikeLike