Rasmus Rodineliussen, PhD candidate at the department of Social Anthropology is, together with Emilia Groupp from Stanford, the co-editor at the Anthropology Book Forum where book reviews are released digitally every Monday. 

Now their work has been awarded with the GAD New Directions Award at the annual American Anthropological Associations conference. 

The GAD announcement of the award:

The General Anthropology Division (GAD) of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) is pleased to announce the Anthropology Book Forum as the 2022 winner of the GAD New Directions Award (Group category).

The Anthropology Book Forum (ABF) was founded by the American Anthropological Association as an experimental digital platform aimed at accelerating the scholarly book review process and expanding conversations around newly published work. As an open access journal, committed to a set of principles that aims to reduce barriers to accessibility, the Forum publishes reviews of newly published work in multiple formats every Monday, 52 weeks a year. Based on the idea that book reviews are not just summaries of academic texts, but engagements with scholarship, ideas and authors, the Forum seeks to facilitate connections and exchange between authors and readers within and outside of anthropology. Working with over 100 publishers around the world, we continuously seek to make available a broad range of texts relevant to anthropological audiences, broadly conceived. With an online readership of around 3,000 per month, and a contributor base of 1300 and growing, we are constantly exploring and experimenting with new modes of engagement and new forms of written, audio and visual review formats. Our Facebook page currently has over 2,300 followers, and we are in the process of expanding our website. With avid engagement, the Forum demonstrates that such spaces play a crucial role in facilitating a vibrant exchange of knowledge, particularly in a time increasingly characterized by exclusion and remote virtual connectivity brought on both by the pandemic and ongoing political, economic and academic boundaries. As the new site grows, it will facilitate the expansion of new review formats, cross-disciplinary conversations and a space for ongoing experimentation and dialogue. 

In their selection, the GAD Awards Committee recognizes the Anthropology Book Forum for the vision, commitment, and broad impact that diverse and accessible formats of anthropological knowledge offer multiple readerships within and outside the academy.