End of 2018: A message from TFS

As 2018 draws to a close, this week on TFS we bring you a special ‘End of Year’ message from our own Ian Pollock, Julia Brown, Simon Theobald and Jodie-Lee Trembath.

This past year has been an incredible one for us, with 27 podcast episodes and almost 60 blog posts. We have touched on topics ranging from dog-spotting to decolonisation, ethnographic practice to trade agreements. We’ve released interviews with Annie McCarthy, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Elizabeth Watt, Ghassan Hage, Vijayendra Rao, Cris Shore, Brad Weiss, Mick Dodson, Steve Woolgar, Kim Fortun, Katerina Teaiwa, and Deborah Heath. We’ve hosted special guest panellists Justine Chambers, Stephanie Betz,  Saidalavi Thodika, Liam Gammon, Sana Ashraf, Bruma Rios-Mendoza, Patrick McCartney, Esteban Gomez and Carie Little Hersh. We’ve released podcasts in both Thai and Indonesian, have one coming soon in French, and would like to continue producing episodes in other languages. We’ve recorded interviews at conferences in multiple countries, including the 4S Conference in Sydney, the AAA Conference in California, and the AAS Conference in Cairns. These experiences allow us to grow as we learn from and share knowledge with others – something that is very important to us.

This year has seen the expansion of our team. Thanks to the help of our amazing interns, Alisa Asmalovskaya and Alina Rizvi, we were able to start adding transcriptions to some of our podcast episodes - stay tuned, there's an entire back catalogue of episodes still to be done. Having Alisa and Alina involved has been invaluable and we are happy to now welcome Alisa as our new international talent scout. Ian is stepping down from his role as Executive Producer (don’t worry - he’ll still be with us!) and Deanna Catto and Matthew Phung have joined our Executive Team. We'll also be introducing some new members in the social media management space in 2019. We’d also like to welcome our new regular contributors to our blog: Esther Anderson from the University of Southern Queensland, Holly Walters from Brandeis University and Stephanie Betz from the Australian National University -- if you'd like your name added to that list, let us know! Finally, we’ll soon be starting a new project … so keep an eye out for more exciting things happening in 2019!

While the other Familiar Strangers are working hard to finish their theses, we’d like to congratulate Dr Julia Brown (how awesome is that title!) for completing her PhD, and Matthew and Deanna for graduating from their Undergraduate Bachelor’s Degrees – all in December! If you've recently graduated, a HUGE congratulations to you, too. Woohoo!

Finally, we’d like to give a massive shout out to everyone who has contributed to TFS and thank all the listeners of our podcast and readers of our blog for your ongoing support. 2019 will be another big year for TFS and we look forward to seeing you again then. Until then though...

KEEP TALKING STRANGE!

This anthropology podcast is supported by the Australian Anthropological Society, the ANU’s College of Asia and the Pacific and College of Arts and Social Sciences, and the Australian Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, and is produced in collaboration with the American Anthropological Association.