Eighty years of Social Anthropology at Edinburgh
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Marking the 80th anniversary with the ASA PeopleFest festival in Edinburgh, 29–31 May 2026.
Post-war Britain in 1946 saw the founding of a new learned society, the Association of Social Anthropologists, and the arrival of the first social anthropologists at the University of Edinburgh - the beginnings of what would, in time, become a department in its own right. Both strands have spent the eight decades since asking the same kinds of questions: about how people make sense of the lives they live, the communities they build, and the worlds they inherit and change. In 2026, the two anniversaries are being marked together at ASA PeopleFest in Edinburgh.
Eighty years at Edinburgh
Edinburgh has seen 80 years of teaching, research, and graduates who have carried the discipline into new fields and new places. Our anthropologists have conducted fieldwork on every continent. Generations of Edinburgh students have gone on to work in journalism, policy, design, healthcare, the arts, technology, museums, NGOs, government, and academic departments around the world. The discipline has changed shape many times in those 80 years - and the department has changed with it.
What has remained constant is what social anthropology offers: careful attention to other lives that helps in understanding one's own, and methods grounded in patience, observation, and the willingness to sit with complexity.
ASA PeopleFest 2026
This May, the Association of Social Anthropologists has chosen Edinburgh to host the second edition of ASA PeopleFest - its public festival of social anthropology. Following the inaugural edition in Manchester in 2024, the festival comes to Edinburgh for our Social Anthropology subject area’s 80th anniversary.
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