About Us

Executive Board

NEAA President

NEAA President-Elect

NEAA Past President

Jessica Skolnikoff, Roger Williams University

Secretary

Treasurer

2026 Annual Meeting Program Chair

Board Member At Large

Alumni Liaison

Webmaster & Membership Coordinator

Archivist

The NEAA or Northeastern Anthropological Society, was founded in 1961. Since then, the organization has evolved into a vibrant community of scholars and professionals and students whose annual rite of conference is a wonderful chance to meet, talk, and exchange views. We welcome you to our effort.

NEAA President’s Message

Welcome to the  NEAA website! 

The NEAA is excited to announce our 2026 conference will return to New Jersey with first time hosts Rowan University in Glassboro, NJ on April 17-18, 2026.  We are so excited to have a new university get involved in the NEAA and look forward to seeing many new faces at the conference in 2026.

The NEAA Conference welcomes scholars and applied practitioners in all subfields of anthropology and related disciplines doing ethnographic, qualitative, and quantitative research, along with creative approaches in research methodology and reporting.  We believe this will be an enriching environment for sharing work. I always learn so much at the conference and leave it loving anthropology even more.

We are dedicated to the NEAA continuing to welcome all anthropologists and people doing ethnographic research—professors in the classrooms, applied anthropologists, NEAA alumni, and students throughout their academic journeys, and people doing creative expressions of research too. If you are a faculty member thinking of bringing your students to present or to just see what it is all about, we welcome you. If you are a student coming to present for the first time, we promise this will be a supportive place for your presentation. If you are a seasoned veteran of the conference, welcome back! We would love for you to contact us to become even more involved.  

The Executive Board recognizes the past few years have been difficult for many people and that many of our members continue to work through challenges. As an organization, we have navigated the last several years as best we could. We maintain our dedication to undergraduate students and serving scholars and professionals by offering an intimate setting for sharing work and engaging in the kinds of networking opportunities only a small, regional organization can offer. We will continue to evaluate what we can do better to position the organization for the future. Two initiatives that are already underway: reaching out to partner with other organizations and creating a community for anthropology graduates beyond the classroom. 

In addition, you will see below this message our organization’s action plan committing to diversity, equity, and inclusion within the NEAA and our home institutions.

Please come along for the ride!

Peter Little

NEAA President

You Belong

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Action Plan

The NEAA Board is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion work as an ongoing dialogue and evolving plan of action. We are strongly aware that these efforts are more complex than simply writing a statement, so we commit to an action plan for creating sustainable practices to ensure the NEAA is accountable to DEI work now and in the future.

Objectives:

  1. Examine and acknowledge our own individual pasts and privileges along with those in the discipline of anthropology.  All our work has been and will continue to be seated in those pasts.

  2. Encourage all members of the NEAA, if applicable, to re-examine their own work and how it intersects with others, especially in the classroom, and how we can be DEI change agents and disruptors of the exclusionary systems and practices with which we engage.

  3. Craft conferences that are increasingly inclusive of all people interested in anthropology, and which center on the tenets of Universal Design. 

First Actions:

  1. We will continue to acknowledge the Indigenous land that the NEAA occupies at our conferences and the Indigenous land of the institutions that participate in the NEAA while also working to support the participation of Indigenous scholars.

  2. We plan to review our membership through the lens of DEI and examine how we maintain and seek out new members to expand the inclusion of students, researchers, and practitioners who have been historically marginalized in the discipline.

  3. We will maintain a supportive environment at our conference for students and faculty to try out new ideas as a starting point for creating more inclusive spaces for dialogue.

  4. At our annual conference, we will seek out and make space for awareness and support for DEI work in anthropology and other disciplines through teaching, scholarship, and research, beginning with emphasizing the importance of universal design for presentations.

The NEAA Board understands that while work is currently being done at multiple levels in all disciplines, many anthropologists have been doing forms of this work for decades.  It is those anthropologists we wish to emulate, while also acknowledging the harm our field has caused. We acknowledge that dismantling systems of white supremacy, ableism, patriarchy, and heteronormativity, especially within our own communities, disciplines and institutions, is a never-ending process, and, above all, one that must result in tangible change.

We are in the process of developing one-, three-, five- and ten-year plans to move this commitment forward, fully realizing the work will have to be deliberate, consistent, flexible, and responsive.

Sincerely,

NEAA Executive Board