Building on that energy, the Fall 2026 Conference planning process became an opportunity to reimagine SHA's performance practice more fundamentally. The concept emerged from SHA Co-President Amina Tawasil, a Tausug anthropologist from the Sulu Archipelago, and was developed in conversation with conference organizer Fernanda Dias, co-founder of the Kilomba Collective and a member of the Paulo Freire Initiative. Together, we turned inward toward the range of origins, traditions, and ways of knowing that SHA's members carry, and let that reflection guide the design of the event itself. It led us away from the salon drawing rooms of 18th-century Paris and toward the significance of the circle in many communities around the world.

One tradition is the círculos de cultura, a practice developed within popular education movements, most closely associated with Paulo Freire, in which knowledge is generated collectively rather than transmitted from a single authority. In a círculos de cultura, there is no stage and no audience in the traditional sense: participants are co-creators, and the circle itself is the methodology.

From this lineage, SHA's Círculos de Etnografia is born, an immersive, interactive open mic that transforms SHA's performance event into a living expression of multimodal ethnography. The Círculos de Etnografia will take place biannually. This year, 2026, it will be part of the SHA Fall Conference in New York City.

Calls for performers will be published on September 3rd, 2026.