Short Abstract

This panel explores graphic and sound-based methods in qualitative African Studies. It asks how creative, sensory approaches can complement conventional methods and reshape knowledge production, representation, and ethical engagement with communities.

Long Abstract

Social science research in African contexts is shaped by contested memories, unequal archives, and delicate researcher-interlocutor relations. This panel asks how graphic and sound-based methods can enrich qualitative inquiry and knowledge production. Graphic methods, such as sketching, drawing, painting, and storyboarding, encourage sustained observation and embodied interaction, capturing spatial, sensory, and affective dimensions that textual fieldnotes may miss. Sound-based methods, such as walking sound-place-storytelling, soundscape ethnography, and audio diaries, attend to voice, silence, rhythm, noise, and environment, extending interview- and text-centred approaches. Rather than replacing conventional methods, these creative approaches complement them and raise critical questions about representation, consent, ownership, translation, and accessibility. We invite papers using creative methods in African Studies and related fields. We are especially interested in how such methods address methodological challenges, engage African epistemologies and oral and aural traditions, and deepen understanding of complex social life. Contributions may address ethics, collaboration, dissemination, or the politics of sensory knowledge production. We welcome experimental formats, including visual essays, audio papers, and multimodal presentations, and papers that consider how gender, language, disability, and coloniality shape sensory research.

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