PhD Workshop: Ethnography of Connections

The workshop critically addresses a number of questions related to fieldwork methodologies in an increasingly interconnected world. Consider the following: the past decade or so, the social media technologies have dramatically changed modes of production, consumption and circulation of information as well as modes of interaction and self-presentation The inter-personal interaction now often includes engagement via social media too. The fieldwork now often ‘spills over’ physical settings into the digital sphere, and in this context, the subject position and relation of the fieldworker and the informant is more blurred than ever. As scholarly attention increasingly shifts to themes of commodification, supply chains, capital investments, extractive economies, labour movement and global policy regimes of a variety, fieldwork requires following networks that sometimes connect unlikely places and actors together. This one-day workshop will rethink theory and methods required to study connections.

Application

Please send a short CV + one page abstract of your project. You will be required to send in 5 pages long paper focusing on your fieldwork (concluded and/or intended) before the workshop.

Deadline: 15th August 2016

Public lectures

As part of the workshop there will be two public guest lectures:

  • Media, locality and community: Notes on ethnography and media in a township in Durban by Professor Thomas Blom Hansen, Stanford University

  • YouTube or Participant Observation? Recent fieldwork experiences on global infrastructure in Reunion Island by Professor Edward Simpson, School of Oriental and African Studies, London

Lecturers

Thomas Blom Hansen is Professor of Anthropology and director of South Asia Center at Stanford University, USA. He is also Honorary Professor of Modern South Asian Studies, at the department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen.

Edward Simpson is Professor of Anthropology, School of Oriental and African Studies, London. He currently directs a five-year ERC programme on ‘Roads and the politics of thought: Ethnograpohic Approaches to Infrastructure Development in South Asia’. (tbc)

Ravinder Kaur is Associate Professor of Modern South Asian Studies, Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen. She currently directs a FKK five-year research programme ‘Emerging Worlds: Ethnographic explorations of new South-South Connections.

ECTS: 0,8 for participtation. 2,3 for presentation of papers