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Paper short abstract

Between lab and studio, this paper examines how the Global Heritage Lab reframes ethnography as transdisciplinary knowledge production with diverse, historically and regionally situated research partners from academia, arts and society, and reflects on the potentials and tensions of this approach.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines the Global Heritage Lab as a site where ethnographic practice unfolds through transdisciplinary collaboration rather than observation, documentation, or analysis alone. It uses the figures of the lab and the studio as contrasting yet productive ways of thinking about how knowledge is made. The laboratory, historically tied to the natural sciences, is associated with controlled experimentation oriented around hypotheses, while the studio, rooted in artistic practice, is a space of making where knowledge develops through material engagement and improvisation.

Rather than treating lab and studio as opposing models, the paper approaches them as two figures that illuminate different aspects of knowledge production in collaborations between artists, scholars, and diverse publics. In the Global Heritage Lab, this takes the form of dialogues across disciplines, co-created artworks, and participatory installations that invite visitors into ongoing conversations.

Here, the Lab itself becomes a field for experimenting with new multimodal methods of ethnographic practice. Anthropological concerns enter into dialogue with other disciplines, the arts, and members of local and global society, and are transformed through these encounters. Rather than speaking about others, ethnographic practice shifts toward what Trinh T. Minh-ha calls “speaking nearby,” grounded in listening and more-than-textual practice.

Drawing on projects addressing the legacies of Christian missionisation and fashion, and inquiries into human-plant relations shaped by colonisation and extractivism, the paper discusses the potentials and pitfalls of this approach for rethinking ethnographic practice as a form of transdisciplinary co-creation.