Felix is the co-founder and managing editor of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology (CEA), an on-line open-access teaching and learning resource that has provided reliable, peer-reviewed anthropological knowledge since 2017.
Felix had the idea for this open encyclopedia while still a PhD student at Department of Social Anthropology of the University of Cambridge. The Department was quick to support the project, and with the help of a Wenner-Gren Innovations grant the CEA was launched. The Cambridge Department has since secured funding for the open encyclopedia, which is growing rapidly, thanks to a team effort involving 14 members of academic and administrative staff.
The CEA is part of a growing movement for open-access anthropology. It is based on the firm conviction that anthropological knowledge must be shared between academics and with the general public in order to deal with the fundamental challenges of our time. So far, the site has attracted 200 000 readers from over 190 countries. About a third of readers are based outside of high-income countries.
Open access is essential because most universities in the world lack the money to buy and look after increasingly expensive printed books and journals, says Felix.
The CEA also innovates on traditional encyclopedias by considering topic suggestions from authors, and by reviewing the work of authors from any institution, just like a scientific journal. You can follow the CEA on Twitter and Facebook (@anthroencyclo).
Felix is based in the Global Health Politics team at SUM. He is studying innovative financing mechanisms for vaccines as part of a Research Council of Norway-funded project on Norway's approach to public-private cooperation for pandemic preparedness and response (PANPREP), led by Katerini Storeng.
Research on global health
Read more about the research group on Global Health Politics at SUM.