The Future of Field Work: The Promise and Perils of Research in the Twenty-First Century

Thursday, October 23, 2025 - Friday, October 24, 2025 is the American Philosophical Society's upcoming conference in Philadelphia, PA (USA) centered around The Future of Field Work. Dr. Jennifer Gee will be representing the Organization of Biological Field Stations to discuss Models of Sustainability with Dr. Nancy Simmons from the American Museum of Natural History who will be speaking about her multidisciplinary, collaborative research team that studies bats in Belize, and Dr. Jill Pruetz from Texas State University who will discuss how her team is sustaining its long-term Fongoli Savanna Chimpanzee Project. This session will be held on Friday, October 24 from 3:15 - 4:30 PM.

The American Philosophical Society (APS) was founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin and is the United States' oldest learned society, dedicated to advancing useful knowledge. In 2005 the American Philosophical Society launched the Lewis and Clark Fund for Exploration and Field Research. The brainchild of APS President Baruch Blumberg, the fund was created to support exploratory field studies for the collection of specimens and data and to provide the imaginative stimulus that accompanies direct observation. Since its inception, the program has been doggedly interdisciplinary and has supported over 900 projects on all seven continents in a wide-range of fields, such as archaeology, anthropology, biology, ecology, geography, geology, linguistics, paleontology, and population genetics, among others.