IUAES

The International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES) is the largest world forum of anthropologists and ethnologists, with members from more than fifty countries. Every five years, in different parts of the world, the IUAES sponsors a major Congress (ICAES/World Congress), gathering researchers from all of the various subfields and branches of anthropology. The IUAES was founded under the auspices of UNESCO in 1948. The International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (ICAES) had been separately founded in London in 1934. The two organizations united in 1948, and merged officially in 1968. The main objective of the IUAES is the internationalization of anthropology, and the cross-cultural honing and public dissemination of anthropological research perspectives.

The earliest predecessor of the IUAES was the International Congress of Anthropology and Prehistoric Archaeology, which was founded in La Spezia, Italy, in 1865. In 1932, in Basle, Switzerland, it was decided to split the congress into two sections, one for the Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences and one for the Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences. This is how the ICAES was born, becoming operative in 1934, when it held its first meeting in London, UK. Meetings were scheduled for every four years, but only one more congress was held, in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1938, before World War II made it impossible for people to convene. It took ten years before the next congress was held, in 1948, in Brussels, Belgium. Here a special committee was established to be concerned solely with anthropological interests and this became the IUAES. It was formed under the aegis of UNESCO and became a member of the International Council for Philosophy and Humanistic Studies (ICPHS), which it remains to this day.

The four-year congress cycle continued with meetings in Vienna (1952), Philadelphia (1956), Paris (1960) and Moscow (1964). Up to this point the IUAES remained separate from the ICAES, and was presided over by different people until Henri Vallois took over both presidencies in 1956. Just four years prior to this, in 1952, the International Social Science Council (ISSC) was founded and the IUAES has been represented in it ever since. By 1964, at the ICAES in Moscow, it was decided that the two organizations be joined de facto. At the following congress, in Tokyo (1968), they were united de jure. At the same congress, it was also decided to change the time interval between congresses from four to five years, scheduling the following congress for 1973 in Chicago. At the subsequent congress, held in New Delhi, India, in 1978, it was proposed to organize inter-congresses. These smaller meetings enable countries which do not have the resources to hold a large-scale congress to participate actively. IUAES Inter-Congresses are held with varied frequency in the five-year interval between congresses. To ensure the financial autonomy of the Union from its congresses, in 1998 it was decided to again separate the presidency of the IUAES from that of each succeeding ICAES. The ICAES scheduled for 2008 in Kunming, China, had to be postponed by one year, and was held in 2009 as the IUAES World Congress. The next World Congress was held in Manchester, UK, in 2013.