Short Abstract:

This workshop invites postgraduate students (and Early Career Researchers) to think critically about how they might effectively express their own anthropological voice and navigate the social politics of academia. Established and experienced anthropologists will encourage reflection on how to navigate academic and public spaces – including the digital world – while preserving and protecting our voices as anthropologists.

Long Abstract:

This workshop invites postgraduate and ECR anthropologists to engage with three key areas: 1) cultivating an academic identity with integrity, 2)the use, risks, and benefits of expressing one’s voice, and 2) networking, communication, and research as emerging academics, especially when engaging in the digital world.

Postgraduate students and ECR’s are often in precarious positions due to the instability of current and future employment, and therefore often feel restricted by how they can express themselves as academics. On top of this pressure, budding anthropologists are often encouraged to use online platforms to network with like-minded researchers and amplify their own voice and research. The digital space is a significant arena for anthropologists to express their views, share research, network, engage with others, and reflect on current events. Such engagement can be difficult when trying to think objectively about future employment, and similarly balancing respectful and ethical relationships with their interlocutors and ongoing research.

This workshop thus aims to encourage reflection on how to engage anthropologically in different formats, and how to navigate the complex online world as emerging anthropologists. It will provide a space for student and early career anthropologists to think critically about the role of the digital when engaging with their research on online platforms, and prompt reflection and discussion about exploring, expressing, and protecting our anthropological voices. This includes learning how to navigate the complex social politics of academia, presenting yourself as an academic, transitioning from “student” to “professional”, how to cultivate your own academic identity with integrity, and develop writing and research that helps to build your individual anthropological voice.

Moderator

Tyler Riordan

Tyler is the 2021 Chairperson of the Australian Network of Student Anthropologists (ANSA). Tyler is also a PhD candidate in Anthropology and Hospitality at the University of Queensland (UQ) where he works as a Research Assistant and Casual Academic. Tyler’s PhD project investigates the experiences of migrants who work in platform-based food-delivery. His ethnographic research on migrant labour in the ‘gig’ economy explores themes such as justice, resistance, and precarity. Tyler also hopes to further understand the concepts of social hospitality, virtual hospitality, and hospitableness.

Panellists

Nicole McEwen

Nicole is based at the University of Western Australia (UWA), and has lived in Perth her whole life. She is researching the development of the Fly in, Fly out family in WA. This year, she has led a campaign against the restructure at UWA, which included slashing the entire anthropology and sociology department and making other disciplines teaching only. She organised protests of hundreds of students to demand that UWA management reverse its decision, which forced them to make a series of minor concessions, including saving two jobs in anthropology.

Sarah Haggar

Sarah is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at the University of Queensland (UQ). Her thesis investigates a local iteration of a global interfaith organisation to understand the role of interreligious networks within socio-political efforts for peace-making and coexistence. She coordinates the UQ anthropology working papers series and has been the ANSA Secretary for 2021. In this role she has worked to promote the voice of anthropology students in calling attention to national and international issues. Sarah believes we must create safe spaces where students can be vulnerable and discuss issues such as decolonisation, imposter syndrome, academia and mental health, and institutional precarity.

Lucas Marie

Lucas is currently teaching Anthropology at the School of Social and Political Sciences at The University of Melbourne and working on a research project about Hip Hop dance at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. His research has been particularly interested in the reproductions, expressions and consumptions of hip hop dance cultures, of which he himself is an active participant. He started 'breaking' when he was 14 and has been active in the scene as a competitive breaker for over twenty years now. More broadly, his anthropological work explores tensions between globalisation and localisation, processes of social action and exchange, and the culturally specific and contested nature of 'authenticity'.