This year, 2024, marked the 9th Biennial Graduate Student Anthropology Conference. The theme of the conference was, “Creating Anthropologies: Moving Between and Beyond Boundaries” and encouraged submissions that bridge, straddle, transcend, or explore the intersections of disciplinary, geographical, and conceptual boundaries. The announcement and call for papers stated,
“For example, Schneider and Hayes (2020) argue an archaeology that remains a discipline unto itself cannot be decolonized, and practitioners should seek to undiscipline it. Their aim is to move beyond conventional anthropological tools and concepts, prioritizing the questions, methods, and ideals of indigenous communities. This conference builds on their call. Untying knots that bind disciplines, we search for threads interpreting anthropology through novel ways.”
The conference was planned and hosted entirely by UCSC students in the Friends of Lambda Alpha National Anthropology Honor Society, Alpha Gamma of California, and Diversity in Anthropology. Over 70 participants, both in-person and virtual, attended the event. This year, undergraduate students were encouraged to submit completed, on-going, or proposed research. Jason de Leon, a prominent anthropologist and archaeologist at UCLA, acted as the keynote speaker:
“Jason De León is Professor of Anthropology and Chicana, Chicano, and Central American Studies and Director of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is also Executive Director of the Undocumented Migration Project, a 501(c)(3) research, arts, and education collective that seeks to raise awareness about migration issues globally while also assisting families of missing migrants be reunited with their loved ones.”