PeopleFest 2026
Venue
Various venues around EdinburghDescription
Across three days, 56 events will take place at 15 venues across central Edinburgh. The programme includes the Firth Lecture; film screenings and discussions; listening walks; exhibitions; workshops; live podcasts; roundtables; and conversations on subjects ranging from climate ethnography to plant communication, and from the future of higher education to the everyday work of belonging.
Full programme (PDF)
Booking information via ASA PeopleFest website
Prospective students will find PeopleFest a useful introduction to the discipline, its questions, and its practitioners. Several events have been designed with new audiences in mind, including The Anthropology Podcast Launch; The Human Library of Gen-Z Anthropology; Tomorrow's Anthropologists; and Why Anthropology in Schools Matters.
Alumni are warmly invited to return for the weekend. A number of the festival's contributors are current and former Edinburgh students, and the weekend includes a reception following the Firth Lecture on Friday evening.
Members of the public are welcome at all events. The festival is almost entirely free, most events welcome drop-ins, and the Friday opening exhibitions in the Chrystal Macmillan Building foyer are open across the whole weekend.
The Firth Lecture
The ASA's Annual Firth Lecture is delivered each year by a distinguished social anthropologist. The 2026 lecture, hosted as part of PeopleFest, is Growing Pains: the labour of making plants productive, given by Edinburgh Alumna Professor Rebecca Cassidy, William Wyse Professor of Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. It takes place on Friday 29 May, 5pm, at the Meadows Lecture Theatre.
About PeopleFest
ASA PeopleFest is the Association of Social Anthropologists' public festival of anthropology. The festival is designed to bring new audiences to anthropological research and to make the work of the discipline visible beyond its academic settings. The first edition was hosted by the University of Manchester in 2024; the second comes to Edinburgh to mark the80th anniversary of Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh.
PeopleFest 2026 is hosted by the School of Social and Political Science, Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, and the Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth.
ASA PeopleFest 2026 official site