The workshop “Doing Cultural Analysis Beyond the Gap. Towards a European Applied Anthropology” aims to develop a distinctively European applied anthropology that brings together anthropological traditions and approaches from Northern and South-Eastern Europe. Currently, European applied anthropology is not a distinguished field, but rather the hum of simultaneous debates, research projects, and localized endeavors, at times overlapping with developments in neighboring fields such as public anthropology.

Applied anthropology tends to be conflated with engaged anthropology and approaches that have developed in US-American contexts. However, applied anthropology in the European context is not a mirror of its American counterpart, nor is it a discipline solely practiced in the Western academic world. On the contrary, some of the most vocal proponents of a European applied anthropology have advanced the debate from their workplaces in Eastern and Southern Europe.

Deepening our collaboration with applied anthropologists from Northwestern and Southeastern Europe and with practicing ethnographers, we want to grasp the different conceptualizations of applied anthropology inside and outside academia, and collaborate with academic networks jointly strengthening our discipline’s social and political impact.