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On the Brink with Andi Simon


Sep 25, 2017

What a treat it is to listen to our conversation with Adam Gamwell and Ryan Collins, two anthropologists who are trying really hard to make anthropology relevant to buisnesses, corporations and leaders well beyond the acadmic classroom.  They bring together their different perspectives. But, they share their ideas through their podcast, This Anthro Life. 

Listen, share and lets make anthropology part of your tool kit to help you and your organization "see, feel and think" in new ways. 

Let me tell you more about our two interviewees.

Adam Gamwell is a design anthropologist whose research and consulting work focuses on science and technology, environmental design, agricultural biodiversity conservation, and Peruvian quinoa. He is a PhD Candidate at Brandeis University. He is currently host, Creative Director, and Executive Producer for This Anthro Life Podcast, a public education initiative to bring social science tools and insight to wider publics. He is also a freelance ethnographic and design consultant.

Ryan Collins is an archaeological anthropologist with interests and experience in ethnographic survey and public education. His research is focused on comparative understandings of the social changes entailed by the development of complex society, specializing in the crystallization of early political and ritual economies in Mesoamerica with an emphasis in the Northern Lowlands of the Yucatan Peninsula. Ryan serves as the Education Designer, Editor, Host and Producer of This Anthro Life Podcast, a public facing and interdisciplinary education initiative seeking to engage wider audiences through stories and insights from the social sciences.

In this episode, Adam Gamwell and Ryan Collins and I discuss:

  • Design anthropology in big businesses
  • Making US society more open to tools of anthropology
  • Conversations as a social technology
  • Communication divides in cultures and societies
  • Stories as the essence of people
  • Appropriate storytelling defined by space
  • Fast-paced technology changes in agriculture
  • What humans keep and what humans change
  • Creative responses to change
  • Anthropology relevant to today’s technologies

Resources mentioned in this episode: