The Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology (OEA) is an open teaching and learning resource for anthropology. The OEA's goal is to facilitate access to anthropological knowledge for experts and non-experts worldwide. It does not aspire to constitute a new canon of conclusive anthropological knowledge. Instead, the OEA is meant as a continuously growing introductory resource for all those who would like to familiarise themselves with particular subjects of interest and with the discipline of social anthropology more broadly. All entries are peer-reviewed by leading academics, making the OEA one of the most reliable resources for anthropological knowledge on the web.
The OEA is part of a growing movement for open access anthropology. It is based on the firm conviction that anthropological knowledge must be shared between academics and with the general public in order to deal with the fundamental challenges of our time. We therefore actively encourage submissions from scholars around the globe, and we include entries on contemporary topics such as climate change, migration, and finance as well as entries about long-established anthropological subjects such as kinship and ritual.
As an open access resource we rely on voluntary labour from editors, reviewers and authors. We are committed to ensuring that this is conducted in an environment of respect, transparency and professionalism. The OEA has been listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) since 2021 and you can find out about our review process here.
Editorial Board
Editorial Team
Advisory Board
- Dr Nikhil Anand, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania
- Dr Naor Ben-Yehoyada, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University
- Prof. Matei Candea, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge
- Dr Sophie Chao, Lecturer of Anthropology, University of Sydney
- Dr Resto Cruz, Lecturer in Social Anthropology, University of Edinburgh
- Prof. Harri Englund, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge
- Dr Michele Ilana Friedner, Associate Professor at the Department of Comparative Human Development, University of Chicago
- Prof. Lesley Green, Professor of Anthropology, University of Cape Town
- Dr Isabelle Guérin, Directrice de Recherche Socio-économiste, Université Paris Cité
- Prof. Martin Holbraad, Professor of Social Anthropology, University College London
- Prof. Webb Keane, George Herbert Mead Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan
- Prof. Tobias Kelly, Professor of Political and Legal Anthropology, University of Edinburgh
- Prof. Nolwazi Mkhwanazi, Professor of Anthropology, University of Pretoria
- Dr. Horacio Ortiz, French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS)
- Prof. Nayanika Mathur, Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies, University of Oxford
- Dr Perveez Mody, Associate Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge
- Prof. Julia Pauli, Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Hamburg
- Prof. Thurka Sangaramoorthy, Professor of Anthropology, American University
- Prof. Alpa Shah, Statutory Professor of Anthropology, University of Oxford
Publisher: Open Knowledge Press (OKP)
History and former members
The Open Encyclopedia of Anthropology was founded by Dr Felix Stein in 2022 and is published by Open Knowledge Press. It follows the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology (CEA) which was hosted at the Department of Anthropology of the University of Cambridge from November 2017 until December 2022. The CEA had been built with the help of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the UK's Economic and Social Research Council. The OEA has been funded by Knowledge Unlatched, the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the Moving Matters Programme at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam (2025).
Former members
Editors
- 2022-2026 Dr Hanna Nieber, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany
- 2022-2026 Prof. Riddhi Bhandari, Jindal School of Liberal Arts and Humanities, New Delhi, India
- 2022-2025 Dr Rachel Cantave, Skidmore College, New York, USA
- 2017-2022 Dr Felix Stein, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Editorial Board
- 2015-2016 Dr Christopher Kaplonski CEA Economics Editor
- 2017-2022 Prof. Matei Candea: CEA Theory and Methods Editor
- 2017-2022 Dr Hildegard Diemberger: CEA Kinship Editor
- 2017-2022 Prof. Sian Lazar: CEA Politics Editor
- 2017-2022 Prof. Joel Robbins: CEA Religion Editor
- 2017-2022 Dr Andrew Sanchez: CEA Economics Editor
- 2017-2022 Dr Rupert Stasch: CEA Visual Editor
- 2022-2025 Dr Branwyn Polykett: OEA Health Editor
Editorial Assistance
- 2019-2021 Dr Raquel Campos Valverde: Editorial Assistant
- 2017-2020 Cole Crawford: IT Manager
- 2020-2022 Carlitos Yoder: IT Manager
We would like to thank Terry Chilvers and Tim Davison for IT hosting and Prof. James Laidlaw for overall support.
