About GBAS
The Global Business Anthropology Summit (GBAS), held annually, in different places in the world, is a collaboration among anthropologists from an array of professional environments across a global network. The aim of this network is to continue to draw out and learn from the experiences of these practitioners, exposing new ways and conditions for collaborating with different institutions, organizations, and companies, using anthropology in work.
The overall goal of the GBAS is to bridge the gap between academia and industry, demonstrating the value of
anthropological perspectives in creating more effective and human-centered business strategies.
GBAS held its first meeting in Detroit in 2018, and since then, a vibrant international community has emerged in New York, Berlin, Mexico City and now Tokyo. Practitioners, researchers, innovators, business people, and others come together looking for tools and approaches offered by the holistic perspective of anthropology in action.
Past Summits
Wayne State University, Detroit, USA
In April 2018, in Detroit, Michigan, anthropologists came together from around the world, representing many career stages and types of employment. The intent, to explore the state of business anthropology and to plan for its future. Anthropologists who attended the event were party to setting the parameters for discussion during the four months before the Summit. Key concerns were consolidated: how people practice business anthropology, how the marketplace is responding to the value of anthropology, and how to prepare future generations. The echo of a reinvented Detroit was felt across the Summit.
Fordham University, New York City, USA
May, 2019 witnessed the second annual Global Business Anthropology Summit. The event goal was to create roadmaps and practical tools that would help increase demand for anthropologists in business and address issues such as training, standards, and ethics. The Summit was organized in several formats that stressed collaboration in the form of workshops and panel discussions that often highlighted case materials and problem solving toward the goal of expanding business anthropology’s reach. Some of NYC prominence in marketing and consumer research was a felt influence.
Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany (Virtual Conference)
Freie Universität Berlin hosted GBAS 2021. Preparations for the event fell in the darkest times of a historic Pandemic and anthropology’s tools and lenses have been put severely to the test. The uncertainty of the times became an important tool and opportunity for GBAS to test digital co-working among anthropologists and businesses as partners, a precedent for new ways of collaborating that can reach global audiences. The 2021 theme addressed challenges of sustainability, from foresight and future studies to the human face of taxation, to black researchers in business, to businesses’ internal shifts, to anthropology’s roles in future-proofing business, to the very limits of human centricity.
Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City, Mexico
Universidad Iberoamericana hosted GBAS 2023.
GBAS 2025 will be held in Tokyo, Japan