CUSAS Workshop with Dr Andrea Pia (LSE)

CUSAS Workshop with Dr Andrea Pia (LSE)What are you doing it for? A conversation about public anthropology at the collapse of the liberal order

 

What is anthropology’s contribution to public life, and how is it delivered? Do anthropologists have a responsibility to contribute to the communities beyond the academy that make their research possible? Furthermore, what happens when ethnography goes public? How can a researcher maintain the motivation required for any anthropological project when its findings may be challenged, censored, or even blatantly neglected by the public, research interlocutors, and colleagues?

 

Reflecting on two decades of work in and around China and within activist collectives, Andrea E. Pia addresses some of the most unsettling questions regarding the enduring social value of anthropology amidst political attacks, institutional downsizing, and the perceived collapse of the liberal world as we know it.

 

Bio

Andrea E. Pia is Associate Professor in Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author of Cutting the Mass Line: Water, Politics, and Climate in Southwest China (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024), the co-editor of China as Context: Anthropology, Post-globalisation and the Neglect of China (Manchester University Press, 2025) and the translator of the Italian edition of 中国人类学史 (Renmin University Press, 2008). His essays have appeared in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Cultural Anthropology, and the Journal of Political Ecology, among others. He is the creator of the interactive digital ethnography The Long Day of the Young Peng and an editor of the OA Journal Made in China.