AntroDialogues, Inc. (ADI) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting and encouraging equitable, ethical, and collaborative academic dialogue, with a particular emphasis on Mexico and transnational scholarly communities working in the Americas. Our mission is to create sustained spaces for critical exchange that challenge historical exclusions, promote shared knowledge production, and strengthen relationships among scholars, students, and descendant communities.
We work to address long-standing structural inequities in academic practice, especially those that have privileged Global North institutions and researchers over Mexican and Indigenous scholars. These inequities are reflected in access to academic forums, citation practices, research funding, and the authority to define academic narratives. ADI exists to confront these imbalances directly by supporting platforms where multiple voices are not only included, but visibilized, respected, and engaged as intellectual peers.
At its core, ADI is committed to dialogue as a practice: connections across national borders, institutional hierarchies, disciplinary traditions, and epistemological frameworks. We believe that meaningful scholarships emerge through sustained conversation rather than adversarial debate, and through collaboration rather than extraction. Our work is informed by decades of critical reflection within Oaxacan anthropology, including the recognition that earlier models of scholarly exchange—most notably those exemplified by 20th century societies’ annual meetings and academic global north publications—excluded women, Mexican, and Indigenous scholars promoting divisive intellectual climates. ADI seeks not simply to correct these omissions, but to build new models of scholarly engagement rooted in mutual accountability, transparency, and respect.
The organization serves multiple interconnected communities. These include Mexican, Canadian, and U.S.-based researchers working in Mexico; students and early-career scholars seeking accessible and supportive spaces to present their work; and local Indigenous and heritage communities whose histories, lands, and cultural practices are central to academic research. ADI is particularly committed to ensuring that scholarly encounters are accessible to those who have historically faced barriers to participation, whether due to economic inequality, visa and travel restrictions, language, or institutional marginalization.
To advance its mission, ADI organizes academic symposia, roundtables, and public facing events that prioritize constructive exchange and collaborative knowledge production. These include both international conference sessions and meetings based in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. By holding events in Mexico and partnering with local cultural institutions. ADI works to reconnect scholarly discussion with the communities and landscapes that sustain our research and make academic knowledge more accessible beyond university settings.
ADI also aims to support the professional development of students and emerging scholars by creating mentoring-oriented spaces that encourage dialogue across generations and national traditions. Through these encounters, participants are able to build networks, develop collaborative projects, and reflect critically on the ethical responsibilities of academic work.
Ultimately, ADI seeks to contribute to a more just and reflexive discipline, one in which knowledge about the past is produced collaboratively, responsibly, and in dialogue with the people most directly connected to that past. By institutionalizing spaces of exchange grounded in equity and respect, ADI works toward a future in which archaeology and anthropology are not only scientifically rigorous, but socially accountable and publicly engaged.
antrodialogues.org 