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CASCA hosts conferences annually, and our members are the first to receive invitations to attend and present.

CASCA 2025 – McGill, Montreal

May 7 – May 10, 2025

Confluences

The 2025 conference of the Canadian Anthropology Society/La Société Canadienne d’Anthropologie inaugurates the association’s second half century by inviting reflections on confluences. Confluences at once intimate the location of the meeting in Montreal, where waters, languages and peoples have long met, and the conditions and aims of anthropology as a discipline concerned with relations between persons, other-than-human beings, and their environments. Our current conjuncture is characterized by divisiveness and war, by “echo-chambers” and ecological crisis. However, in this conjuncture we are also witness to new waves of social and political mobilization and renewed efforts to fight inequalities, establish coalitions, and mitigate the deleterious effects of climate change. Our conference invites reflection on anthropology in this conjuncture, with particular attention to anthropologists’ ability to observe, analyze and interpret the relations between local realities and larger processes. How do anthropologists navigate shared and contested presents and the possible futures that might arise? Just as sharing is never a foregone conclusion but rather the outcome of material and imaginative labour, so too contestation is not only a negative act but carries within it the potential for movement in different directions. Confluences may be about convergence but they can also indicate points of solidarity that ignite productive disruption.

The conference invites contributions, in the form of research papers, panels and roundtables that together give us a picture of where anthropology is and where it is headed. What are the confluences—of history, material conditions, individual and collective choices—that constitute anthropology’s present, and what are the confluences anthropologists seek in the future? Bringing together emerging and established scholars, researchers working within interdisciplinary teams, anthropologists working in academia and in other areas, on theoretical and applied projects, and in a range of media, the conference hopes to continue building Canadian anthropology as vibrant, diverse and collaborative.

Submission and deadlines information is coming soon!

Student Travel Grant

Grant Information Every year, CASCA offers small travel grants to doctoral students who are presenting at our annual conference. Every year, the award committee struggles with the gap between the…

Student Travel Grant

Grant Information

Every year, CASCA offers small travel grants to doctoral students who are presenting at our annual conference. Every year, the award committee struggles with the gap between the many strong applications we receive and our limited resources. Students tell us that even a small amount of money makes a huge difference to their ability to attend, but we would like to be able to do more. With that in mind, CASCA has added a new category to our charitable donations options: Student Travel Reimbursement.  As with all CASCA donations, a receipt will be issued for tax purposes. Please consider supporting the next generation of anthropologists and strengthening CASCA by donating through the following link.

Value

Awards of up to $600 may be granted to an applicant. Approval of and the amount of the award will be calculated at the discretion of CASCA’s Executive on the basis of travel distance, financial need, stage of program, scholarly merit and number of applicants.

Funds will be disbursed at the conference, upon submission of original receipts, including proof of travel/ticket stub, a copy of student I.D. Please come prepared to provide copies.

Eligibility

  • Available to Masters and PhD students who are presenting at annual conference (priority to students who have completed their fieldwork).
  • Applicants MUST BE affiliated with a Canadian institution and be CASCA members in good standing at the time of conference attendance, as well as an active participant in the meeting, i.e. delivering a paper, poster or other original contribution.
  • Applicants can only collect grants one time at each level of study (one MA max and one PhD max).

Submission

Applicants must submit the following for consideration:

  • The abstract of your paper or panel submission
  • CV (2-page maximum)
  • A completed application form

Applications must be received by March 15, 2024. Incomplete and/or late applications will not be considered. Do not assume your message has been received unless it has been acknowledged.

Notice to successful applicants should be available by late March 2020, giving sufficient time for applicants to make travel reservations and arrangements.

Email inquiries should include the subject line “CASCA Student Travel Grant”.

Conference Classifieds

CALL FOR STORIES (Papers):
ORGANIZING OBJECTS THROUGH THE STORIES WE TELL (PART 2)
CASCA 2024, May 15-18, University of British Columbia, Okanagan
Roundtable Co-organizers: Jason Ellsworth (Dalhousie University) & Zabeen Khamisa (University of Winnipeg)
Objects are continuously in transition through creation, circulation, consumption, and/or destruction. Their value and meaning are subject to the shifting perspectives of the social, political, and economic contexts they are enmeshed. Participants are asked to consider how objects are being made and unmade in new ways by the humans that organize them. Members of our roundtable will show-and-tell the ethnographic stories of the objects we encounter in our research. Each speaker will take on their object of choice for only 7 minutes! These short form presentations will be unpacked in a discussion and allow time for the audience to share their own stories.
The previous panel we organized at the recent AAA / CASCA meetings in 2023 included objects such as woven wraps, miniature carnival throws, mix tapes, a family painting, currency, shapewear, turbans and not milk. We are looking for new objects and stories that may also become part of a publication.
Virtual or In-person: We are open to both options depending on the submissions we receive. Please let us know your preference when submitting.
Please send a short one paragraph description of your object and story for us to consider to jason.ellsworth@dal.ca before January 29th.

Incidental Skills, Surprising Lessons: Trajectories of Learning from the Field
Co-Organizers: Martha Radice (Dalhousie University) and Mary-Lee Mulholland (Mount Royal University)
Ever since they got up out of their proverbial armchairs, anthropologists have learned how to do practical tasks during fieldwork. Yet even though ‘doing things’ is part of the point of participant observation, we tend to think about fieldwork in terms of research questions and analytical frameworks. This panel discusses the skills we pick up during fieldwork. These skills can be materially productive, resulting in mundane or spectacular objects such as bread, mittens, costumes, or dwellings. Other skills are developed through ‘techniques of the body’ that initiate the anthropologist into new ways of walking, eating, conversing, wrestling, or playing an instrument. Some skills may be central to the research – for instance, in ethnographies of dancing, sports, hunting, or sex – yet the process of acquiring them can still lead to unanticipated insights. Other skills are incidental, taking anthropologists on unexpected trajectories.
This panel considers questions such as what do we learn from learning these skills? Are they fun? Grueling? Uncomfortable? Are we always happy to have learnt them, or are there things we’d rather not have had to learn?
Interested participants should send a brief proposal (maximum of 150 words) of what they would like to contribute to this panel to Martha (martha.radice@dal.ca) and Mary-Lee (mmulholland@mtroyal.ca) by January 26, 2024.

Past Conferences

2023 AAA/CASCA Annual Meeting

Annual Meeting: Transitions November 15th-19th, 2023 Transitions may be the most constant feature of everyday life. With endless uncertainties that…

CASCA 2024 – UBC Okanagan

CASCA 2024 – UBC Okanagan Sedimented Histories | Vital Trajectories UBC Okanagan on Syilx territory and online May 15-18, 2024…

Engagements and Entanglements

2021 / University of Guelph (online)

*Cancelled due to COVID-19*

2020 / Western University

Changing Climates

2019 / Vancouver, BC

Contrapunteo

2018 / Universidad de Oriente

Mo(u)vment

2017 / University of Ottawa

Solidarities

2016 / Dalhousie University

Landscapes of Knowledges

2015 / Université Laval

The Unexpected

2012 / University of Alberta

Contact

Membership

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