RAI Research Webinar 

A VIRTUAL SEMINAR SERIES BY THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE

Monday 22 February 2021 at 3-5pm (GMT)  


Anthropology and/of the future with Ezri Carlebach

presented by the RAI’s Anthropology of Policy and Practice Committee

with speakers:

Professor Kathleen Richardson, De Montfort University, author of An Anthropology of Robots and AI: Annihilation Anxiety and Machines.

Professor Rebecca Bryant, Utrecht University, co-author of The Anthropology of the Future.

Stephen Oram, science fiction writer, author of Eating Robots, Biohacked and Begging and other works.

Chaired by Ezri Carlebach, coordinator for Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies, RAI Anthropology of Policy and Practice Committee.

This webinar will be held on Zoom. To register please go to: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEucOuopjsoE9ShMAkX0T-8L35m30Y8YawJ  

Background Proponents of future or anticipatory anthropologies on the one hand, and post- and trans-humanist anthropologies on the other, appear to offer contradictory views of the role of anthropological knowledge of, and in, the future. While the former tend to take a human-centric and ethics-based stance, the latter posit the inevitability of a future that is something other than human. Are these in effect mutually exclusive anthropologies? Does anthropology have a future in each of these potentially diverging futures? Should we be asking if ‘the future’ has a future?

Join our distinguished panel to explore these and related issues in what promises to be a fascinating conversation, presented by the RAI’s Anthropology of Policy and Practice Committee.

Photo: Yoal Desurmont on Unsplash