Short Abstract:

Convenors have worked ethnographically for many years with children in translocal families. We invite lab participants to engage with each other in hands-on learning, working with creative, experimental, and participatory methodologies that reach out to the lived experience of people on the move.

Long Abstract:

The convenors of this laboratory have worked ethnographically for several years with children in translocal families in multidisciplinary research projects. We have tried to work against a self-evident and unquestioned adult perspective in childhood studies, and have therefore reached out to methodologies that would be meaningful also to the children participating in our research. Working alongside with artists provides rich possibilities for new epistemologies of anthropological knowledge production. We invite the laboratory participants to engage with us and each other in learning about and working with some creative, experimental and participatory methodologies that aim to reach out to the lived experience of people on the move, and engage them in research.

We will present the methodologies and working modes of story crafting, drawing, art work preparation and performance, and documentary film making, all done together with research participants. The visual artist will showcase the ways in which artists and researchers can work together and inspire each other's work. She has selected the most captivating and tangible passages from the researchers' fieldwork materials and visualised them, thereby finding emotional and engaging moments for the reader of the ethnography.

There will be hands-on collaborative work, experiments and immersion involving all five senses in small groups or pairs of participants, also outside the conference room (weather permitting).

UPDATE: You Can bring to the session a meaningful object which you always carry with you when travelling abroad - or a picture of this object. We will create stories of such objects.