Short Abstract

This panel explores contemporary forms and norms of studio anthropology as an emergent site or stage of methodological, epistemological and ethico-political transformation in anthropology.

Long Abstract

For nearly two decades, the studio model has inspired anthropologists seeking to rethink ethnography beyond solitary observation and writing, as well as to reconsider long-held assumptions that intervention in the field is epistemologically contaminating or ethically suspect. Initially imagined by a few pioneering practitioners as a pedagogical space for collective inquiry and learning through making artefacts, the studio model is finding renewed interest as a key site and mode of practice in multimodal anthropology. By embracing concept-work, design, and the prototyping of field devices and multimodal artefacts, the studio invites reimagining ethnography as a practice of the artificial.

This panel invites contributions that explore contemporary forms and norms of studio anthropology, from more formalized settings of collaborative work to improvised arrangements within ethnographic practice. This poses several questions: Which collaborations does the studio model require and facilitate? What is the relation between studio and field, or the archive? How do studio practices—prototyping, tinkering, co-designing, materializing concepts—reshape what counts as ethnographic knowledge? What are the promises and pitfalls of reimagining anthropology as a science of the artificial organized around field devices and multimodal artefacts?

By bringing together scholars and practitioners who work in, with, and through these practices, this panel seeks to trace the contours of the studio as a site or stage of methodological, epistemological and ethico-political transformation in anthropology. We welcome papers and presentations that critically and creatively engage with studio-based projects, experimental collaborations, and multimodal forms of ethnographic practice.

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