Selected events and academic activities are included in the News-section in order to inform the academic and research community as well as the public about issues related to culture, borders and gender.
The ‘Club of Gender Studies’ in collaboration with the ‘Club of Ethnography’ of the Culture-Borders- Gender/LAB at the Department of Balkan, Slavic & Oriental Studies (BSOS) supports and hosts the publication of a new annual magazine entitled ‘EIRINI-Anthropological Journal for the Study of Gender, Cultural Diversity and Social Discriminations’ (https://ireneanthropologic.wixsite.com/website).
The Journal will host publications of research papers of postgraduate students, PhD candidates, and alumni of BSOS and other departments of UoM. The Journal will also accept papers of young graduates in Social Anthropology, Cultural Studies and other Social Sciences from Greek and foreign programs which study cultural diversity and social discrimination with a special focus on Gender Studies supporting equality.
The Department of Balkan Slavic and Oriental Studies, the “History of Eastern and Southeastern Europe LAB” and the “Culture-Borders-Gender /LAB” co-organize a conference entitled “2020 an extraordinary year in pandemic times: Academic experiences and research practices from the Balkans“, which will take place online on the zoom platform on 23rd and 24th of January 2021. The link of the conference will be announced on Friday 22/1/2021 The conference is open to the public. To register, enter your details on the platform: https://forms.gle/BYgwBWDFTdM7QpU6A
How
can anthropological knowledge be thought otherwise? What might the
implications of this be for research practice and communication more
broadly? This keynote panel introduces the core themes of the conference
by bringing together three contemporary thinkers and the unique ideas
that each mobilise in their critical engagements with knowledge.
18:05 | Professor Haidy Geismar (UCL)
18:25 | Dr Ludovic Coupaye (UCL) | The Anthropology of Techniques and the Techniques of Anthropology
18:45 | Kuña Jaqueline Aranduhá (Kuñangue Aty Guasu / UFGD) | Decolonising anthropology: a perspective from Guarani & Kaiowá indigenous women
19:05 | Panel discussion
19:40 – 20:40 | Kuñangue Online: Opening Ceremony
To attend, please register for free on Eventbrite, and joining instructions will be shared on the day. To stay in the loop, please follow UCL MAL on our social media: Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. UCL MAL is an interdisciplinary research network that explores innovative methods for conducting and presenting ethnographic research. We have organised several seminar series and exhibitions at UCL and have presented work and ideas at Somerset House, Modern Art Oxford, and the Tate Modern. Founded in 2017 by doctoral research students at UCL Anthropology, today MAL is composed of over 50 members around the world, with representatives from anthropology, art, computer science, sound studies, film, and human rights. MAL has been generously supported by UCL Anthropology, the Institute of Advanced Studies, UCL Grand Challenges, and the British Museum.
November 12-13, 2021 – Princeton University and Columbia University in the City of New York
Princeton University’s Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies and the Department of History at Columbia University invite scholars at all stages of their careers to submit proposals for individual papers to be given at a two-day international history conference scheduled for Friday to Saturday, November 12-13, 2021. The conference will explore the social, political, cultural, and economic interconnections between the Greek War of Independence and the Americas.
The conference, which participates in global bicentennial celebrations of the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence in 1821, is intended to further historical thinking connecting histories of an age of revolutions on multiple continents. It may lend itself to work in a comparative vein or comparisons may arise through discussion of intensive case studies. The organizers anticipate work that fuels rethinking sovereignty, peoplehood, and a world of nations and empires through actors and processes.
Themes to be explored include models of revolution in the Americas in rethinking the Greek Independence struggle; the liberal international moment of the 1820s in southern Europe and connections with the independence movements in South America; attitudes within Greece towards the Americas and the move to independence in the western hemisphere; questions of republics and slavery composed by African-Americans in 1820s; response to the slavery question in the Morea. Approaches to foreign and economic affairs including intervention and non-intervention policies developed in the Americas, such as the Monroe Doctrine and the policy of states in the Americas toward an independent Greece; the rise of an international market for sovereign debt and the debt boom/bust of the 1820s; economic and technological aspects of American involvement including steamship purchases; the suppression of piracy; the involvement of Protestant missions; the rescue of Greek orphans. Intellectual history and cultural and artistic responses, such as international Benthamism and radical constitutionalism; novel approaches to philhellenes of the Western Hemisphere, including classicizing political thought (e.g., Jefferson, Koraes); and the impact of philhellenism on American life, culture, and institutions (e.g., the cases of Francis Lieber and Samuel Gridley Howe); rethinking American philhellenes in Greece; the circulation of memoirs, journalism, captive and travel literature and the literary representation of the Greek war in the United States; memories of 1821 and Greek-American life over the following century and a half.
The conference is intended to meet over two sequential days, one each at the respective campuses of the hosting institutions. If the conference is held in person as planned, speakers selected will be provided four nights lodging (2 nights in Princeton, 2 nights in New York City, booked on their behalf) and reimbursement of a fixed amount toward travel expenses. Selected participants should however be prepared for possible changes in the modality of the conference if continuing public health and safety concerns prevail against or limit physical assembly. Health and safety concerns might even dictate a change in the dates of the conference. The organizers commit to making a decision in good time regarding modality. Speakers should not purchase tickets for travel that are not fully refundable until they are notified by the organizers to do so. Should the conference be held virtually or in hybrid mode, there will be no reimbursements towards unexecuted travel expenses, and should the conference be held in person on different dates, there be will no reimbursement for travel arrangements made with respect to the original dates.
Deadline for proposals is Monday, February 8, 2021. Applicants should submit an abstract of no longer than 300 words and a one-page summary curriculum vitae to Sara Brooks (sbrooks@princeton.edu), Secretary to the Program
Committee.
Program Committee: Dimitri Gondicas (Princeton
University); Jeremy Adelman (Princeton University); Natasha Wheatley
(Princeton University); Peter Wirzbicki (Princeton University); Mark
Mazower (Columbia University); Konstantina Zanou (Columbia University);
Kostas Kostis (University of Athens)
How are ethnographic encounters with alterity mediated and transformed by multimedia
technologies? Drawing on the insights and questions raised by both material culture studies
and the ontological turn, we aim to facilitate a global conversation on the concepts, forms
and mediums through which knowledge is produced and shared. This conference is hosted
by UCL Multimedia Anthropology Lab, an interdisciplinary research network aimed at
developing innovative methods for anthropological practice.
CONFERENCE THEME: KNOWLEDGE OTHERWISE
Anthropological encounters with others have led us to question ideas previously taken as
given. Concepts of family, society, culture, nature, and what it means to be human have all
been subject to revision. When these critiques are directed towards knowledge itself, the
different ideas people have about what knowledge is and how it is shared have led us to
question the theories and practices through which we seek to know. Proponents of the
ontological turn (Holbraad & Pedersen 2017) have developed these ideas to call for an
anthropological project that is radically experimental, drawing on ethnographic encounters
with alterity to critically interrogate the analytical concepts that inform our research.
At the same time, material culture studies has pointed towards the important role of materials
in the articulation of human knowledge. The materials through which ethnographic
encounters are translated into knowledge – as text, image, sound, performance, simulated
sensory immersion, etc – shape the ways in which these encounters are experienced by
others, and the conceptual affordances they present. We examine how ethnographic
encounters with alterity can disrupt not only the conceptual frameworks of anthropology, but
also the material practices through which knowledge is produced and communicated, and
explore how anthropological knowledge can be both thought and made otherwise.
These questions are especially pertinent in the context of a global pandemic, which has
changed the ways we encounter and communicate with others, disrupting diverse forms of
knowing and doing. In parallel to this conference, UCL MAL has initiated a partnership with
the Kuñangue Aty Guasu, an annual meeting of Guarani & Kaiowá indigenous women in
Brazil, which this year will take place online. The translation of this event into an online format
allows us to reflect on the parallels between the knowledge practices of indigenous
communities and those of anthropologists, and invites us to consider each as a variant
(Maniglier 2016) of the other. If we consider the indigenous meeting as an Other kind of
conference, and the conference as an Other kind of indigenous meeting, what can we learn
about conferences, indigenous meetings, and knowledge itself?
This conference seeks to explore how knowledge can be cast otherwise, in concept,
method, and form. We consider how different concepts of knowledge entail different forms
of practice, and how different materials and techniques enable different conceptual
encounters. What are the conceptual affordances of multimedia encounters with alterity?
What is the relation between sensory experience and conceptual movement? Can
encounters with alterity be simulated in VR? Can we do theory through film or sound? How
can AI traverse multiple ontologies, and what does that mean for concepts? How can
websites, social media, and other digital platforms disseminate research findings? Can
research be presented as performance? How can an exhibition be posed as an experiment?
What is the concept of the concept?
If we are to seriously question the concepts and methods through which we produce
knowledge, then our commitment to being radically experimental must go beyond a critique
of analytical tools and extend to a thorough interrogation of the methods and mediums
through which research is produced and presented.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
UCL MAL invites contributions from academics and practitioners across disciplines who
engage with these questions, and experiment with innovative approaches to conducting and
presenting research. We welcome submissions in any format (accompanied by a written
abstract) and encourage contributors to interpret our theme as broadly as possible. We are
particularly interested in contributions which explore the following topics/methods:
VR & 360 VIDEO | IMMERSIVE ENVIRONMENTS | SONIC ETHNOGRAPHY | NET ART |
PERFORMANCE | ETHNOGRAPHIC FILM | EXHIBITION AS RESEARCH | PROJECTION
MAPPING | SCULPTURE | MULTISENSORY MEDIA | INTERACTIVE INSTALLATION |
PHOTOGRAMMETRY | AI & MACHINE LEARNING | DIGITAL ANTHROPOLOGY | & MORE
Please submit abstracts of no more than 300 words, and any multimedia materials that are
relevant to your work, by 23:59 GMT on Wednesday the 2nd of December 2020. Please
use the following submission link: www.uclmal.com/conferences
CONFERENCE PROGRAMME & KEYNOTE SPEAKERS The conference will take place online on the 12th, 13th & 14th of January 2021, and will be accompanied by an online exhibition of multimedia works. Each day will begin with keynote contributions from academics and practitioners whose theory and practice invite us to think otherwise, followed by thematic panels where experimental research approaches and their implications for theory will be debated in more depth. The following keynote speakers have been confirmed so far:
Ludovic Coupaye | Lecturer in Anthropology | UCL Haidy Geismar | Professor of Anthropology | UCL Jaqueline Aranduhá | Guarani & Kaiowá Indigenous Leader
UCL MULTIMEDIA ANTHROPOLOGY LAB UCL MALis an interdisciplinary research network that explores innovative methods for conducting and presenting ethnographic research. We have organised several seminar series and exhibitions at UCL and have presented work and ideas at Somerset House, Modern Art Oxford, and the Tate Modern. Founded in 2017 by doctoral research students at UCL Anthropology, today MAL is composed of over 50 members around the world, with representatives from anthropology, art, computer science, sound studies, film, and human rights. MAL has been generously supported by UCL Anthropology, the Institute of Advanced Studies, UCL Grand Challenges, and the British Museum.
If you would like to learn more about MAL or our activities please visit our website at www.uclmal.com or contact us directly at info@uclmal.com.
The image above depicts an anthropologist and research assistant sanitising Covid supplies before delivering them to Guarani & Kaiowá indigenous communities in Brazil. The scene, made possible by the presence of a 360 camera, illustrates the hyper-awareness of anthropological encounters in a Covid context and invites us to reflect on the ways in which encounters are mediated – whether by recording technologies, digital tools for remote communication or by PPE.
