The Open Anthropology Lab – LAAB is a non-profit organization to democratise anthropological knowledge beyond academia. They experiment with audiovisual media to communicate anthropology to broad audiences from children to policymakers.

“An open anthropology also means an interconnected anthropology. One of the current priorities of the LAAB is to translate already published contents into different languages and formats. We have prioritised three main topics: economic systems, environmental justice, and human mobility. Our website is expected to work as a repository of ‘decoded’ anthropological analyses, meaning critical approaches without complex words and concepts that are opaque to a non-expert.”

“We hereby present three of our main products. Two comics: “Gens: a Feminist Manifesto for the Study of Capitalism” and “Deuda, desesperación y reparaciones inconclusas en La Guajira, Colombia”, and the cover of our first book Anthropología Xñ, a project devoted to the translation of anthropological knowledge for children. The comics resulted from a collaboration with the authors of the academic articles; and the book from a collaborative methodology to translate ethnographies into games, outdoor activities and stories.

In the long term we expect the site to evolve as a collaborative platform where anthropologists all over the world can express their opinions and engage in public action. We see anthropology as a prototype, as an open and hackable infrastructure that can (and should) be intervened by anyone. The academic articles and books are only two ways in which anthropological knowledge can exist. Let’s start exploring the many others!”