Welcome to the Future Anthropologist!

Hi! I’m Hannah, and I have a habit of asking questions that don’t always have simple answers.

Why do people who speak the same language sound different depending on where they grew up? Why do traditions survive for hundreds of years while others disappear? What can a tiny piece of bone tell us about someone who lived thousands of years ago? And how can understanding the past help us solve problems people face today? Somewhere along the way, I realized that most of the questions I couldn’t stop thinking about had something in common: anthropology.

But when I first became interested in anthropology, I also noticed something strange. So much of what I found was written for people who were already anthropologists. There were academic papers filled with unfamiliar terminology, hour-long lectures, and textbooks that seemed to assume you already knew where to begin. I wanted something different. So I created The Future Anthropologist, a blog and podcast about anthropology made especially for curious students who might not know much about the field yet.

So… what even is anthropology?

At its simplest, anthropology is the study of humans. Which sounds pretty easy, until you realize how enormous that question is. Anthropologists study our biology and evolution, languages, cultures, communities, artifacts, beliefs, behaviors, and histories. One anthropologist might study ancient human remains while another records how a language is created and changing. Someone else might investigate health disparities, migration, food traditions, or how people build communities online.

That enormous range is exactly what I love about anthropology.

My own interests have taken me from studying biology and the brain in a research lab to thinking about language and identity among North Korean defectors, volunteering with children in South Korea, and wondering how culture influences the way people experience health and belonging. Those experiences have made me realize that I don’t want to study humans from only one angle.

Despite the name The Future Anthropologist, I’m not an anthropologist: at least, not yet. I’m a high school student figuring out what this field looks like alongside everyone reading and listening. Think of this less as a professor giving a lecture and more as an invitation to investigate with me. On the blog, I’ll break down anthropology books, research, discoveries, and ideas without assuming you already have a degree in the subject. I’ll share my own takes on what I’m reading, explore questions that send me down research rabbit holes, and connect anthropology to things that might seem completely unrelated at first.

On The Future Anthropologist Podcast, we’ll take those conversations even further. Some episodes will be me exploring a question or concept, while others will feature people whose research, experiences, and work can teach us something new about what it means to be human.

Welcome to The Future Anthropologist.

Let’s figure humans out.