Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

Three students- one from Romania, one from USA, and one from Italy- get together to make a documentary film. Is it a joke? No, it's a joint course of visual anthropology. The paper shows how to engage students in anthropological field work, applying it in filmmaking, and in interdisciplinary teams.

Paper long abstract:

Assigning a long reading list for the anthropology class and expecting the students to read it each week and get critically involved with the texts was more than wishful thinking, in this world of images and digitalization. Even more so, for an “introduction to anthropology” class to film students. Trying to understand what would work in this new era, while remembering the very first years in this field when “being out there and see how people live” was the drive that kept us going at full speed, the teaching method shifted from “the tradition” of reading the established literature and discussions, to a more hands-in approach in the first part, and then, to using the practical tools outside the academic bubble, more precisely in producing documentary films in international and interdisciplinary student teams.

This paper presents the way in which students enrolled in documentary filmmaking master program at Babes-Bolayi University in Romania, practiced observation and participant observation, emphasizing experiential learning, to get familiar with specific anthropologic methods. Secondly, it describes the process of applying these methods in working in interdisciplinary teams with students from University of Wyoming (USA) and Universita Cattolica (Italy). The online visual anthropology class reunited these 3 cultures and perspectives as students produced short visual social essays, surpassing language, time zones and cultural barriers. The new method of teaching transcended the traditional classroom boundaries, made students employ anthropology tools in real-life projects and produce films reaching a large audience, outside the academic bubble.

Send message to Authors

Paper short abstract:

The associations Antropolis, A2030 and CREA are collaborating carrying on several projects of applied anthropology in educational contexts, as the community mapping of Corvetto in Milan, the Scuole Verdi project in Lucca and Il viaggio di Zaher in Venice, to promote an innovative way of teaching.

Paper long abstract:

The associations Antropolis APS, A2030 ODV and Centro di Ricerche Etno-Antropologiche (CREA) are collective associates of the Italian National Professional Association of Anthropology (ANPIA) and they have recently started collaborating, carrying on several projects of applied anthropology in educational contexts, such as the anthropological scavenger's hunt, the community mapping of Corvetto neihgbourhood in Milan, the Scuole Verdi project in Lucca and Il viaggio di Zaher in Venice. The anthropological scavenger's hunt is a workshop for children that encourages the collaboration and the sharing attitude among different teams. The community mapping is a workshop for students that promotes the exploration of a neighbourhood with an ethnographic point of view. The Scuole Verdi project aims to promote the discovering of the environment in urban and suburban areas. Il Viaggio di Zaher brings to schools the life of Zaher, an Afghan refugee who lost his life trying to escape to Italy.

All these projects aim to promote an innovative way of teaching in interactive workshops that will offer the students an experience that will allow them to better approach the complexity and the diversity of the contemporary world, focusing on relevant topics such as community building, environmental issues in urban contexts, the travel of migrants and their back stories. These projects often involve also other local partners, such as DareNGO and the City Ambassadors Team (CAT) or Baobab ONLUS, thus promoting the collaboration among social enterprises and building an always growing network of social actors all over Italy and also abroad.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

Building on my User Experience Research and my lectures in the US and Europe, I propose to highlight ethical underpinnings and ethnography-informed decision making in designing the secondary literature and first-hand fieldwork training for a viable career path in Health Equity and Healthcare Tech.

Paper long abstract:

Students of anthropology training today primarily develop their career trajectories in non-academic sectors but often find themselves underprepared in establishing credibilities in a rapid changing economy in the West and non-Western world. How might we undo traditional anthropological pedagogy and do new applied lens to better prepare our students in today's challenge? What relevancy can we claim on reflexivity in reframing teaching materials and/or introducing new ones? Building on my own 3-year endeavor of a User Experience Researcher career path since the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as my guest lecture experiences in universities across the US and Europe, I propose to highlight ethical underpinnings and ethnography-informed decision making in designing the secondary literature and first-hand fieldwork training. In specific, I build a case study by an examination of how learnings of exploitative algorithms and lived human experiences could inform ethical standpoints and health equity designs in a virtual healthcare company. I argue that applied anthropology should be reframed as instrumental and pivotal to the everyday design decisions in the health tech industry, because this enables students to think and engage classic theories through a practical lens and design their fieldwork around everyday encounters with a goal of producing recommendations on health equity. Feedback from anthropology students has proved that such reframing allows them to think together their learnings and a viable career path in the health tech industry.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

Medical anthropology is growing within health education. Our content helps to improve communication, understanding of patient behaviour and needs, professional satisfaction, lower costs, etc.. I will reflect on my experience coordinating the module “diversity in medicine” in medical education.

Paper long abstract:

Medical anthropology is a growing subfield of anthropology, especially as a subject within health education. Over the past decades, medical anthropology was gradually introduced to become part of the education of nurses, medical doctors, and occupational therapists in undergraduate and post-graduate programs. For many, being a medical anthropologist teaching in health professions education still often means being “the social sciences´ alien” of a team of natural scientists and physicians. Our content helps to improve communication, understanding of patient behaviour and needs, professional satisfaction, lower costs, and overall better health outcomes for all involved (less stress and less conflicts). These benefits are not seen by students nor by colleagues from the start and therefore we need a lot of communication about it. I see this already as part of the process of teaching anthropology. What helps the learning of the students, and the acceptance of the content overall is the involvement of patients as speakers about their journey within healthcare services. A team of teachers with different professional backgrounds also contributes to the success of a module/course: nurses and doctors with migration biographies or from minorities, ethicists, and professional interpreters among others. I will present some reflections on the module “diversity in medicine” which I coordinated in a bachelor program of medical sciences at a university in Austria. Being innovative in a very conservative faculty was my goal. Successful teaching is influenced by structural factors as well as leaders´ opinions on costs and needed efforts to offer this.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

Anthropology in Albania is a source of democratization that aims to deconstruct communist discourse in humanities. The paper discusses the transition of Ethnology into Anthropology, its function, how pedagogically developed in Albanian curricula and how it is benefited in applied sectors.

Paper long abstract:

Anthropology in Albania is a new entry in the country’s academic milieu, officially it was introduced in 2008 independently and outside of the corpus of research institutions of Albanian Academy of Science. The study of humanity named Anthropology under authoritarianism was unknown either excluded, after ten years since the fall of communism, the discipline was seen, accepted, and applied as ‘innovative’, ‘western’, ‘global’. Following the politics of liberation/change in both science and education, the new discipline’s theory, methods and application considered Anthropology as a source of democratization, a way to deconstruct communist methodology in humanities.

During communism the discipline of Ethnology in Albania has dominantly been applied as a singular discipline with a descriptive focus of its own people by neglecting multiple analyses of Albanian society. In comparing ethnology and anthropology the first stresses itself as a homogenous discipline with focus to its own nation and tradition, the second is heterogeneous with alternative methods and practices.

At present days Anthropology in Albania is growing its position in universities study programs integrated in health programs, social, political, and communication sciences. In this paper I will discuss about the transitional process of Ethnology into Anthropology, in Albanian academic sphere. By talking about this aspect the paper also analyses the content and function of the discipline during the two political systems, communism and post-communism.

The paper also presents how Anthropology was diffused in Albanian curricula and developed pedagogically, which study program profit most and how knowledge and tools are applied from graduated students.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

This presentation will discuss how anthropological pedagogical methods are adopted in education programming at the Ulster American Folk Park, Northern Ireland, by promoting critical thinking, empathy, and awareness of environmental sustainability within the programming for primary school children.

Paper long abstract:

The Ulster American Folk Park in County Tyrone Northern Ireland is a living history museum focussing on the migration of people from Ireland to North America with narratives and artefacts originating in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. The main museum is an outdoor park exhibiting original homes and buildings from Ulster and North America, with an accompanying indoor gallery that offers historical context to the buildings and stories featured.

Through a comparison between two education workshops developed by education officer and historian Dr Pauline Gardiner, and delivered by the education team at the Ulster American Folk Park, this paper outlines the importance of anthropological pedagogical methodologies in museum education relating to migration and materiality. The team adopts these methods to promote empathetic attitudes towards refugees by focussing on narratives of emigration from Ulster to America in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, using ancestral homes to promote awareness of environmental sustainability, anthropological pedagogical practices such object-based learning, analysis of primary resources, and interpretation of the narratives and objects by museum staff and the children themselves within their workshop activities. I will outline how critical thinking, empathy, and issues around sustainability in modern life are brought to the fore in the education offering at this living history museum.

Send message to Authors

Paper short abstract:

Through an evaluation and reflection of one syllabus and course, this paper strives to challenge epistemological, pedagogical, and ontological norms by detailing possibilities and material praxis of learning from a decolonized, anti-racist, and unsettled anthropological canon.

Paper long abstract:

In the fall of 2022, the incoming graduate cohort in American University’s Public Anthropology program enrolled in the Craft of Anthropology, a foundational social theory course required for the degree. This course section utilized a modified version of the Reworking the History of Social Theory for 21st Century Anthropology syllabus. By engaging with this course and syllabus, our classroom and readings became a cognitive and emotional space that expanded and challenged who and what we imagine as our intellectual lineage. It also questioned and destabilized broader epistemological, pedagogical, and ontological norms, those experienced and felt within the discipline and within our own minds. Through an evaluation and reflection of the syllabus and course, we strive to provide the original syllabus authors with documented outcomes and afterlives of their creation and demonstrate to the discipline at-large the possibilities and material praxis of learning from a decolonized, anti-racist, and unsettled anthropological canon.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

The pressure to succeed in academia creates a crisis for scholars. They need to produce measurable and visible work and follow a specific career path. How can we create an educational environment that values emotional reflexivity, not one that discourages emotional expression in the name of success?

Paper long abstract:

The way we teach and learn influences our understanding of what is considered appropriate from an anthropological perspective and what is not. Traditionally, emotions have been viewed as a feminine trait, which results in the difficulties and emotional struggles faced in the field being overlooked. The main focus is on routine practices such as publishing, applying for funding, and peer review. This standardization can negatively impact healthy dialogue between researchers and inhibit honest work. This creates a false image of scientific practice that is at odds with the reality of fieldwork and hinders the acquisition of anthropological knowledge. By acknowledging these feelings and humanizing the field, we can encourage open discussions about the fieldwork and the writing process (which is particularly important for non-native speakers of English, who face additional challenges when writing for academic journals). It is essential to include emotional reflexivity in the teaching and learning process for developing empathy and nuanced insights.

For anthropologists, there is no specific job description. There is no checklist to follow. Outside of fieldwork, researchers face hours of questions, anxieties, thoughts, projections, hopes, disappointments, self-struggles, and frustrations. The anthropologist is never the same person. Even if there were a best practice guideline, it would not be helpful because research cases and individuals differ greatly. But no one prepares you for the emotional impact of conducting research. As a researcher, you have to be your emotional support system.

The emotional work inherent in anthropology should be acknowledged, encouraged, and included in methodological courses.

Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

Schumacher College in Devon, UK combines theoretical with relational and practical learning to forster reciprocal relationality. To add a degree in anthropology to its interdisciplinary teaching, I consider a curriculum that combines environmental anthropology and applied agroecology.

Paper long abstract:

The paper first discusses the pedagogical structures at Schumacher College, an interdisciplinary institute for ecological education in Devon, UK. Based on ethnographic research in 2023, it describes the college’s ‘head, heart and hands’ approach to teaching, which combines theoretical with relational and practical learning. In describing the classrooms, the campus and the gardens, I set the scene beyond ivory tower infrastructure in a space for emplaced learning. Then, I describe how classroom theory is substantiated with outdoor experiential methods that exchange common dichotomies of human-environment education for interspecies learning. Finally, I speak of the college’s communal living structures and its ethics of abundant love, to show how they broaden the learning experience beyond the curriculum to everyday care and respect.

The pedagogy that emerges is ecological in that it actively fosters learning through reciprocal relationality. Ecopedagogies aim to transform education to a holistic, systemic, ecological and participative way of understanding the world by actively considering, conversing and collaborating with what is more-than-human.

Second, the paper presents a curriculum idea which fuses environmental anthropology with agroecology, an interdisciplinary field of study and practice to justly regenerate human-environment relationality. I participated in the final year of the College’s practice-based non-accredited course in agroecology, which centred around a 5 acre field for market gardening. So far, anthropology is present at the College through both syllabi and the academic backgrounds of several course leads, and fusing the agroecology course with environmental anthropology I hope to bring to Schumacher College a degree in our discipline.