


































Year in Review

2020 has been a turbulent year – to put it mildly. And as the world has seemed at times to
come to a standstill, academic publishing has continued, and in some corners increased. While
the pandemic has in many ways enhanced and amplified various forms of connectivity, it has
also engendered and exacerbated exclusions and disconnections in multiple ways. Hence, the
last year has provided many a challenge, but also opportunities to be inventive, to think about
why we do things in certain ways and to look forward. In this year’s letter from the editors we
will begin by addressing some of the issues motivating our continuous transformation of the
Forum and how we have been addressing the concerns we noted in 2019. Thereafter, we will
introduce even more possibilities for interactive reviews and scholarly conversation for the
year to come, as well as an exciting new development for the Anthropology Book Forum.

Looking Back: 2020 Year in Review
As an  open access journal, committed to a set of principles that aims to reduce barriers to
accessibility, the Forum publishes reviews weekly,  every Monday. While  we believe open
access is a significant avenue towards increasingly accessibility, we also acknowledge the
multiple  experiences  and  modes  of  exclusion  which  we  believe  editors  and  academic
publishers could play a greater role in addressing. To this end, we have been exploring and
experimenting with new modes of engagement, new forms of written, audio and visual review
formats,  a  broadened  focus  on  more  diverse  titles  relevant  to  anthropology while  also
developing new partnerships and relationships with academic publishers. 

In our previous Year in Review we noted that despite the four-field approach to anthropology
in the  United  States,  we saw less  overall  engagement  from archaeologists.  Last  year,  we
focused on addressing the gap between the number of reviews we receive and publish of
archaeology titles and those of socio-cultural titles. This year, we have carried on our concern
with a more representative publishing schedule with an aim to publish more equitably from
the four fields. During 2020 we published  a significant number of reviews of archaeology
titles, and we also noticed an increasing interest in medical and biological anthropology titles.
In the year to come, we hope to continue to cultivate more engagement from scholars and
students working in these fields. 

During the past year, we began experimenting with audio reviews to complement the written
form, and we also expanded review options to include joint reviews and review articles. This
year we have also looked to include those titles that are of central interest to anthropologists,
but which are often listed under fields such as ‘gender studies,’ ‘urban studies,’ or ‘African

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studies,’ and thus overlooked by publishers uploading titles to our site. We have also focused
on a more inclusive approach to those publishers with whom we work. While we continue to
work closely with large academic publishers, we have also sought out small-scale publishers
(including  those  especially  run  by  women  and  minorities)  in  order  to  expand  the  titles
available  for  review and our  engagement  with  potentially  marginalized  conversations  and
scholarly  contributions.  Currently,  we  work  with  approximately  100  publishers  and  are
actively expanding our list of partners. In addition, we are encouraging reviewers to review
non-English titles to expand the range of work featured by the Forum. Similarly, by allowing
reviewers to also request titles not already listed on our site, we also hope that the variety of
titles and subjects reviewed has and will be further diversified. 

Looking Forward: 2021 
As delineated above, we believe book reviews are not just summaries of academic texts; they
are engagements with scholarship, ideas and authors. As such, in the coming year we aim to
experiment  with  new methods for  engagement  with  scholarship relevant  to  anthropology,
broadly  defined.  Given the  ongoing home-based nature of  current  research and academic
engagement, we foresee spaces such as the Anthropology Book Forum playing a crucial role
in continuing a vibrant exchange of knowledge.  While we will continue to  publish weekly
reviews in writing as  well  as  in  audio  format,  we also  want  to  make the  Forum a more
interactive, living space. We are therefore introducing Author Book Talks, Author Interviews,
and Video Reviews. Let’s go over these different formats a little bit more in detail:

Author Book Talks:  Here we will offer the author a platform to tell the story behind their
book/video.  The  idea  is  not to  provide  their  own  summary  of  the  book,  but  rather  to
contextualize their research, point the audience towards the larger contribution of their work,
for  both  academia  and a  more  general  public.  These  talks  will  be  published alongside  a
written review (not authored by the book author). 

Author Interviews: This will be a space similar to the  Author Talks but now directed by an
interviewer. We will work to facilitate connections between those interested in producing an
interview as a form of review with the book author as well as providing a copy of the book
under discussion. We hope that this mode of review will also provide an opportunity to bring
researchers,  faculty,  and students together  for  a  conversation  that  might  otherwise  not  be
possible. 

Video Reviews: These reviews will function much as a regular written/audio review, only with
the reviewer present ‘physically’ reading the review. We find that during these times of social
distancing, in addition to more enduring forms of separation, it is important to offer spaces
where not only written letters or recorded words can be offered at the Forum, but that authors
and reviewers alike can be ‘present,’ albeit virtually. 

Finally, we are excited to announce that the Forum will be expanding and moving to a site of
its own in the spring of 2021! The new site will facilitate the expansion of review formats,

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cross-disciplinary conversations as well as provide a space for ongoing experimentation and
dialogue. 

Summing up
We hope that by continuing to keep reviews coming regularly, and by offering these more
interactive  formats  and  expanded  opportunities  for  engagement,  the  Anthropology  Book
Forum can play a part in vivid and intellectually stimulating conversations. Last, but not least,
we want to thank our readers and the increasing number of publishers offering us their titles
for review. We are confident that the Forum will continue to grow during 2021 and that we
will, with your help, continue to offer a useful and dynamic resource for knowledge exchange.

Your editors,
Emilia Groupp and Rasmus Rodineliussen

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© 2020 Emilia Groupp and Rasmus Rodineliussen

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