Impact case study database

Since its launch in November 2017, CEA has reached a total of 225,373 readers from 214 countries (unique visitors, or ‘users’, 15/12/2020); with 32,246 of those being repeat users ( E1). We now have an average of 8,589 readers a month, a five-fold increase since November 2018. 32% of our readership comes from outside of North America and Europe; 65% are under 35 (the majority likely being students). 29% of our readership comes from middle or low-income countries (World Bank definition). After the US and UK, the country with the next highest number of readers is India. CEA has 3,304 followers on Twitter (up 69% from 2019), and 1,761 followers on Facebook (up 54% from 2019) ( E1). In September and October 2020, CEA posts on Facebook reached over 50,000 people ( E2), around 4,000 of whom engaged actively (likes, follows, comments). CEA is starting to feature on social media – e.g. in a news story from a Twitter account run for cooperatives, it was added to a Facebook learning resource list by one user, and was described by others as ‘very detailed, well-researched, nuanced, & easy to digest!’, and ‘doing a terrific job’ ( E2).

Impact on access and learning in higher education

As it has grown from 17 to 56 entries, CEA has quickly become a valuable teaching and learning resource for higher education departments globally. As of July 2020, CEA is recommended in more than 20 course outlines in HEIs in the US (U of Austin, Texas; Stanford; Rutgers; U of South Florida; Utah Valley U; Yale; CUNY library and the TriCollege libraries), Canada (Concordia), the UK (UCL; Falmouth), Europe (Wittenberg; Ingoldstadt; Zurich; Delft; Bergen; Oslo; Zagreb), and Israel (Hebrew U) (all in E3) and Vietnam, Argentina , Haiti (State University of Haiti), Mongolia and Egypt (all in E4). An Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Oslo said ‘I think it's an excellent, vital educational project and have used it for teaching - as I am sure hundreds of colleagues have done around the world.’; while a Teaching Fellow at UCL described it as ‘a fantastic open-access resource’ especially useful for prospective students ( E5).

Universities outside of Europe have used CEA to build capacity in their anthropology and other social sciences departments. For example, the Deputy Head of the Department of Anthropology at Vietnam National University says that CEA has ‘enormously benefitted’ his students who ‘do not have access to updated and reliable academic works, in the form of printed copies or online materials accessible only through excessively expensive paywalls.’ CEA has also inspired two public anthropology initiatives at Vietnam National University: a YouTube channel and a website run by students ( E4). A Professor in Anthropological Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires finds CEA ‘an especially rich resource’, which she has used in undergraduate and postgraduate teaching and in the design of research projects. She emphasises that the entries are both comprehensive and well structured ( E4). An Assistant Professor of Sociology at the American University of Cairo describes CEA as ‘an invaluable resource for teaching to students from different backgrounds and at different educational levels.’ ( E4)

Impact on access and learning in schools (UK)

In this first phase, CEA has been disseminated and incorporated into secondary and HE outreach education in the UK. It has been shared with the RAI’s list of 131 secondary teachers and the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) Teaching Anthropology Network ( E6). Contact with members of these lists found that CEA is being used to support the teaching of the International Baccalaureate (IB) in Social Anthropology: one Vice-Principal of an IB Sixth-Form college described CEA as ‘reliable, academic, accessible – perfect.’ ( E7) CEA has also been used in the introductory textbook Introducing Anthropology: What Makes Us Human? (Pountney & Maric 2020) ( E3). RAI’s Education and Communications Officer has utilised CEA in her recent creation of the ‘Ethnographic Video Online, Royal Anthropological Institute Teaching Edition’ series of resources ( E6), especially the film ‘Cannibal Tours’, which uses the entry on Tourism (based on Rupert Stasch’s research ( R2)).

The CEA team has developed a resource pack of teaching activities for the IB curriculum, linked to specific entries. These have been shared with IB teachers in the UK, via the Head of Social Anthropology at Hockerill Anglo-European College in Bishop’s Stortford. During a visit there, focus group discussions with 75 students indicated that the CEA was helpful for extended essays and independent ethnographic research projects ( E8). One student commented that the CEA was useful because ‘When you have chosen a topic that you are interested in (…) but you have not come across any anthropology about that topic yet, you don’t know where to start.’ ( E8). In subsequent emails students said that they were highly likely to use the CEA in the future. During the focus groups, Hockerill College’s Head of Social Anthropology noted that the CEA was a welcome addition to available teaching resources because ‘anything that can help teachers to navigate the syllabus will lead to better uptake of the topic.’ ( E8)

Impact on practitioners and professional bodies (UK)

In the UK, CEA has been introduced by the team to approximately 20 different institutions in third-sector organisations and in central government. A Global Programme Advisor at Oxfam international Oxfam confirmed in 2014 their support for the concept of CEA stating that they would welcome a “free and publicly accessible knowledge resource” which offered ‘a reliable knowledge resource about the people and places we work with every day’ ( E9). A Senior Social Researcher from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs confirms that CEA’s ‘Landscape’ and ‘Ethnography’ entries ‘have been cited in internal evidence products developed by social researchers at DEFRA’ ( E10). CEA was used as a reference resource by the BBC Radio 4 programme, ‘Thinking Allowed’, leading them to invite the author of the entry on ‘Waste’ as a guest on the episode ‘Rummage and Waste’ ( E3).

In addition to all the above, we know that CEA has featured in at least two policy reports (Stripe Partners and The Australian Alliance for Social Enterprise), one funding body report (University Grants Commission India), and seven pieces of public writing or blog posts (Wikipedia entries for ‘ontological turn’ and ‘use of animals in human life’; Concepto.de; Y for Yendetta; Blog of the Biblioteca di Filosofia, Università degli studi di Milano; blog of the Göttinger Instituts für Ethnologie; Ethnologie; International Society for Hunter Gatherer Research) (as of July 2020, listed in E3). Google Scholar lists 251 citations for CEA entries (16/12/2020, E3). We hope to expand this initial outreach in future years, to regions of departmental research expertise, such as Mongolia and China, South America and Southeast Asia.