Abstracts for the 2025 conference are due October 15, 2024 by 11:59 pm PDT.

Four steps to submit an abstract:

STEP 1: Please read the following instructions on how to prepare your abstract before starting the submission process.
STEP 2: Renew your membership or apply to join the AABA by visiting your Member Profile. Renewing/joining ensures that you will receive the member conference registration rate. Note: It is not necessary to be an AABA member to submit an abstract, but the registration fees are much lower for members.
STEP 3: Visit your Member Profile to begin the abstract submission process. First you will click on “Register for AABA 2025” and pay your registration fees.
STEP 4: Once you have paid your registration fees, you will return to your Member Profile and click on “Abstract Submissions.” You will be asked to fill out a survey before entering your abstract information.

As you begin to plan your AABA 2025 presentation, please note:

Contributed research presentations convey leading research results to our peers.
Abstracts cannot be a re-submission of an abstract published previously.
There is no limit on the number of abstracts that an individual may co-author; however, each person may be the first author of only one abstract. Every abstract must have a unique author (and e-mail address) registered for the meetings.
The conference will be held in person in Baltimore March 12-15, 2025. If you are unable to attend in person, there will be an option to present virtually by uploading a recording of a presentation or a pdf of a poster to our virtual platform for asynchronous viewing of conference attendees. There will not be an option to present virtually in a live, online session. With the exception of invited symposia, all online presentations will be asynchronous.
The virtual components of AABA 2025 will include: uploaded posters and recordings of presentations for asynchronous attendee viewing and select live-streamed sessions including invited podium symposia and the Annual Business Meeting. During the abstract submission process you will be asked your presentation format preference.
If you are registering for or submitting an abstract on behalf of someone else, do NOT use your email address or contact information. You MUST use their AABA email address and contact information. For payment, you can use your own credit card and billing information, of course. If you have any questions, please email aabaregistration@burkinc.com BEFORE proceeding with registration and abstract submission.

Below, you will find information about submitting a competitive abstract. Please read it when preparing your submission.

The deadline for submitting your abstract is October 15, 2024.

Information About Poster and Podium Presentations for 2025:

The AABA meeting offers the opportunity to deliver presentations in either a poster or a podium format. You will be asked to state your preference for venue: in person or online. If you submit your research for online presentation, you may choose to upload a pdf of a poster or a recording of a presentation. With the exception of invited symposia, there will not be live, online sessions. If you choose to present online, your presentation materials will need to be uploaded to the virtual platform one week in advance of the conference.

Authors are asked to state their preference for a podium or poster presentation as part of their abstract submission.

While we will try to match all authors with their preferred format, we cannot guarantee that your preferences will be met. Final decisions regarding presentation type and abstract acceptance/rejection rest with the Program Chair.

Abstract Preparation:

All presentations will be represented in the Conference Program volume with a peer-reviewed published abstract. Please prepare your abstract carefully.

Abstracts are reviewed by two members of the Program Committee who rank them on a scale of 1 to 3 (reject, low priority, high priority). If the abstract is acceptable, they also recommend whether it should be a poster or podium presentation. To be ranked highly and accepted, the abstract must contain a clear statement of purpose, provide essential new information, including results of the investigation and conclusion(s), and address the importance of the findings for anthropology. We are aware that many organizations accept abstracts without results, but the AABA does not. To be accepted, an abstract must include clear evidence that data have been analyzed and results have been obtained. Occasionally it is appropriate for abstracts to be submitted which do not include results but which are synthetic in nature. In general, however, abstracts must present new results. Abstracts cannot exceed 250 words.

A careful selection of keywords at the time of submission on your part will enable your abstracts to be appropriately reviewed and help the Advance Program Committee to put together a coherent and exciting program. Please choose your keywords thoughtfully!

As you prepare your abstract, please carefully consider the language used to describe your research. Please be mindful of whether the language in your abstract may inadvertently contribute to marginalization of underrepresented groups in biological anthropology.

To avoid the rejection of your abstract, please do not…

Exceed the allowed word count of 250 words. This count applies to the text of the abstract (not including title, authors, affiliations, and grant support acknowledgements).
Write an abstract that describes a study similar in many respects to a presentation from a previous AABA meeting or other conference. Please be mindful to revise your datasets, analyses, and/or contextual framing as you prepare your 2024 abstract. Self-plagiarism with a previous AABA abstract or an abstract for another conference risks copyright infringement, and therefore, rejection from our 2024 program.
Write an abstract with no results. We are aware that other organizations do accept abstracts that have no results. The AABA has a tradition of only accepting abstracts that show evidence of data analysis.
Write an abstract that describes a study with little to no relationship to biological anthropology. While ours is an interdisciplinary subject, please be sure to explicitly link your research to biological anthropology.
Write more than one abstract as first author. Note: Introductions to and discussions of symposia do not require an abstract. If you are, for example, organizing a podium symposium you can do an introductory paper without an abstract and present a paper with an abstract. What you cannot do is be first author on more than one abstract.
Include extraneous information such as a list of literature cited. There is a stand-alone field for crediting funding agencies. This is not part of your 250 word abstract.
Miss the October 15, 2024 deadline. This is a hard deadline with no exceptions.

Here is an example of what the abstracts for AABA look like:

When you are ready to submit your abstract:

Please review the example abstract above and make sure to have all pieces of information ready.
Renew your membership for 2025. Visit your Member Profile to renew membership or create a new profile.
Please encourage your co-authors to renew their memberships as well.
Presentation Title is entered separately from the abstract. Capitalize only the first word of the title and the first word after a colon. Please see the example above. Please follow these guidelines closely in order to improve formatting consistency of our annual abstract issue (and saving the Program Committee Chair from a lot of copy-editing work...)
Abstract text is pasted into the online system. Limit 250 words. See instructions and formatting in the template above. Abstract content cannot be changed once submitted. Please proof-read carefully!
Funding statement (optional) text (about funding only) is to be pasted into the online system. Limit 30 words.
For abstracts that are part of an invited symposium, the first author will need to be sure to assign their abstract to the proper symposium by selecting the title of their symposium during the submission process through a pull-down menu.
Venue. You will be asked whether you are choosing an in-person or online venue. If you choose “online”, this will entail an asynchronous presentation through materials (recording of talk or PDF of poster) uploaded to a virtual platform. There will not be live, synchronous online sessions (with the exception of invited symposia).
Abstract classification/keywords. When you submit your abstract, you will be asked to chose ONE keyword from a list of broad areas, ONE keyword from the taxon list, and TWO keywords from the third list of areas of specialization. Please choose carefully! This will enable your abstracts to be appropriately reviewed and help the Program Committee to put together a coherent and exciting program.
Author information can then be entered for ALL authors on the paper. You will be able to add co-authors who have Member Profiles, and can designate which author if the primary presenter/first author. For help with co-authors who do not have profiles, please contact Vice President & Program Chair Amy Rector at vicepresident@bioanth.org.
Please be sure to complete the survey associated with the abstract submission as this will help us in planning for the conference, planning for childcare in Baltimore, and in the nomination of new members for AABA’s Executive Committee.

Additional Information:

Interested in chairing a session? The 2025 meeting will include opportunities for chairing sessions. Please indicate your willingness to chair a session during the abstract submission process.

The Abstract Review Process: The Program Committee comprises AABA members in good standing, and includes scholars from a range of fields within our discipline. Each abstract is read by at least two members of the Program Committee with appropriate expertise. Each reviewer ranks the abstracts on a scale of 1 to 3 (reject, low priority, high priority) and recommends the most appropriate format (poster/podium) for the presentation. If two members recommend rejection, the abstract is reviewed by another member of the committee and by the Program Chair. The AABA retains the right of rejection of any abstract. Decisions are final.

Notification of Abstract Acceptance/Rejection: Abstract decisions will be distributed via e-mail to the registered author in early December 2024.

Technical Notes: The online system will e-mail the registered first author a confirmation when you have successfully submitted your abstract. In some cases, especially Gmail addresses and university email run by Google, this email may be filtered as spam. If you do not receive your confirmation email within 1 hour of submission, please e-mail vicepresident@bioanth.org.