Short Abstract

What moves us—and what can anthropology move? We invite multimodal and intersectional contributions exploring gender-based violence, and how ethnographic knowledge moves between lived experience, research, institutions and publics, making anthropology a practice of public intervention.

Long Abstract

What moves us—and what can anthropology move? This workshop takes movement as a double process: being moved by violence, inequality, political polarisation and the experiences of the people with whom we work, while asking how ethnographic knowledge can be moved beyond academia—into institutions, political debates, activist spaces and wider publics. How can ethnography itself move people?

Gendered violence provides one urgent point of departure. Across democracies, commitments to gender equality and protection coexist with persistent gender-based violence and femicide, as well as increasing violence against queer and trans persons. Meanwhile, “gender” has been turned into a fictional threat by right-wing populists, religious movements, and trans-exclusionary feminists. We approach these contradictions as a democratic paradox: institutions may promise equality and protection while simultaneously producing exclusion, neglect or harm. These processes are intersectional, shaped by gender and sexuality, racialisation, migration and citizenship, class, disability and other inequalities.

Yet we want to move beyond exploring violence alone. How can ethnography open spaces for imagining an otherwise? In worlds shaped by violence, imagining different relations, futures and forms of living can sustain resistance and possibilities for change.

We invite multimodal, collaborative and intersectional contributions exploring how ethnographic knowledge moves between lived experience, research, institutions and publics through film, photography, sound, exhibitions, podcasts, performance, archives, digital platforms or counter-investigation. We particularly welcome approaches engaging people affected by violence and inequality as epistemic partners and co-producers of knowledge. What other worlds can multimodal ethnography help us imagine, and how might moving knowledge transform anthropology itself?