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- Convenors:
-
Malena Müller
(Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú)
Serjara Aleman (Université de Lausanne, Switzerland)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Thursday 3 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract
Researchers outside of visual anthropology departments increasingly use the tools and approaches of visual and multimodal anthropology, facing challenges in reconciling these methods with the academic standards of their disciplines. We invite scholars from diverse fields to share their experiences.
Long Abstract
Researchers outside of visual anthropology departments increasingly employ the tools and approaches of visual and multimodal anthropology. However, they often encounter restrictions due to their discipline’s specific requirements and standards of academic production. The use of visual anthropology methods by scholars in related fields - such as sociocultural anthropology, sociology, religious-, gender or area studies - highlights both the potential and challenges involved. How do these researchers manage the growing diversity of data produced during fieldwork, such as written notes, audiovisual recordings, online images, and photographs? And how is this diverse data translated into the final, primarily written outputs, which remain the dominant mode of dissemination in most disciplines?
While numerous publications explore the conceptual, ethical and theoretical implications of visual and multimodal approaches (Pink 2007; Trinh T.Minh-Ha 2013; Ginsburg 2018; Cánepa et al. 2024), only a few provide practical insight and guidance. Some examples are the Filming for Fieldwork approach by Andy Lawrence (2020) in Manchester, the notion of the Camera Ethnography developed by Bina Elisabeth Mohn (2023) in Berlin and the Video Ethnography Lab in Louisiana (Shrum and Scott 2017).
This panel offers the opportunity for scholars from diverse fields to come together to share their experiences, insights, and challenges. We invite researchers from all disciplines to discuss the practical challenges and advantages of fieldwork, data organization and analysis, writing, and dissemination when using visual methods and embracing multimodality. We aim to foster reflection, share practical experiences, and explore strategies and techniques that can benefit researchers across disciplines.
Accepted papers
Session 1 Thursday 3 July, 2025, -Paper short abstract
This contribution interrogates to what extent creative multimodal and visual ethnographic practice can renew the anthropological study of institutions.
Paper long abstract
This contribution interrogates to what extent creative multimodal and visual ethnographic practice can renew the anthropological study of institutions. How may creative methods enhance our understanding of the relation between institutional actors and citizens engaged in processes of bureaucratic recognition? And what challenges do we encounter in including creative practices in our research practices, from data collection until dissemination ? In this contribution we call to transcend the classic boundary between art and science and interrogate the capacity of creative ethnographic practices to generate a different type of thinking and knowledge, thereby being more than a fieldwork method or a form of restitution as separate phases of research (Sarcinelli, Weissensteiner et al, 2022). Through a discussion of concrete experiences, insights and challenges, two aspects will be addressed.
How do creative ethnographies redefine traditional research methods in the anthropological study of institutions? How can creativity transform the dissemination of research outcomes?
Whereas this resonates with ongoing debates on the use of multimodality as a form of restitution as well as fieldwork method, less attention has been paid to creativity-based-translation into ‘description’ and analysis. As a main concrete example we will discuss the co-creation of an article that alternates text and visualisation, which deals with the recognition procedures of parental ties in lesbian family-households (Sarcinelli, Weissensteiner, 2024).
Paper short abstract
This pper explores how visual anthropology can enrich visual sociology, focusing on the MIG-AGE project, which studies migrants' retirement experiences across Europe and integrates visual methods, sharing findings via a multimodal platform while addressing ethical and methodological challenges.
Paper long abstract
The proliferation of visual methodologies and social media has transformed how images are created and disseminated within the social sciences. This paper examines how visual anthropology can enrich visual sociology, fostering insightful research practices. It focuses on the interdisciplinary project MIG-AGE: Do Migrants in Europe Age Well?
This project unites sociologists and anthropologists from four universities, employing both quantitative and qualitative methods. Extensive interviews explore and compare the retirement experiences of economic migrants across Northern and Southern Europe. Visual methods, including photography and photo-elicitation, have been integrated into fieldwork to evoke richer narratives and foster deeper connections with participants. This visual research will also contribute to the development of an ethnographic documentary.
To enhance the representation of diverse data generated during fieldwork, a dedicated website and social media accounts share and integrate written fieldnotes with photographs, creating a multimodal platform for presenting findings. However, challenges arise, particularly regarding time constraints and collaboration within multidisciplinary teams that span different methodological traditions.
Furthermore, social media platforms play a pivotal role in disseminating research findings to broader audiences, but ethical concerns remain. Although participants provide consent for image use, evolving risks related to AI-driven fraud and unauthorized content sharing persist. Recent policy changes by major platforms such as X and Meta, which have reduced fact-checking and content moderation, exacerbate these vulnerabilities.
This paper underscores the ethical and methodological complexities of visual research, advocating for interdisciplinary collaboration and advancing digital ethics discourse.
Paper short abstract
This paper is concerned with how to rebuild the unrecorded or misrepresented history of Indigenous architecture through partaking in the co-creating construction process of a Paiwan slate house, 14 months of fieldwork in Taiwan, and utilising visual methods as a radical approach to history writing.
Paper long abstract
In the field of architectural history and theory, Indigenous architecture is often marginalised as ‘the vernacular’, rather paying attention to the building styles and materials than the history since it is ‘architecture without architects’. At the same time, anthropologists see house merely as a research approach to social reproduction and kinship studies instead of as a subject. This paper is concerned with how to rebuild the unrecorded or misrepresented history of Indigenous architecture through the co-creating construction process of the Kadrangian slate house in Southern Taiwan collaborating with the Paiwan people as a radical approach to history writing.
The study develops multimodal methods of co-creating via oral history interviews, old village site visits, archives, and via spatial practice of a house threatened by policies and cultural discontinuity as the centre—a Technical Activity (TA) lying in the intergenerational shared time, materiality, the body, and the milieu that confronted the predicaments of capitalist society, whilst utilising visual methods such as ethnographic film, time-lapse photography, maps and drawings to bridge spatial practice and the anthropology of technics.
I will share personal experiences throughout my 14-month fieldwork living with the community in compound roles: a PhD researcher, an apprentice, an architectural professional, a filmmaker and, a family member accepted by them. Furthermore, being Principal Investigator of the British Museum’s Endangered Material Knowledge Programme (EMKP) which supported the fieldwork, this paper will also reflect on the way how I manage the enormous audio-visual data created, and on its dissemination as an open-access digital repository.
Paper short abstract
In this presentation, I describe how the “Filmmaking for Fieldwork” approach articulated by Andy Lawrence impacted my research practices and theorising of nationhood by allowing for a richer multisensorial account of how we experience, practice and communicate nationhood through music performance.
Paper long abstract
This presentation is based on my experience using ethnographic filmmaking as part of a multimodal approach during my PhD research on music performance in La Escena Independiente (The Independent Scene) in Lima, Peru. The main argument of my thesis is that music performance is a means to imagine the nation, affording the participants – musicians and audiences alike – a social space to re-produce and co-articulate how they envision community.
In this presentation, I will discuss the impact of ethnographic filmmaking, as proposed by Andy Lawrence, on my understanding of nationhood. In the “Filmmaking for Fieldwork” (2020) approach, the filmmaker does not work with a predefined script but elaborates on it during filming and editing, emphasising the social processes, interactions, and practices observed. This allows the analysis of the footage not only as a representation but also encourages the researcher to critically asses their position and learning process. It highlights the collaboration of knowledge production between the researcher and participants. Throughout the research, my understanding of ethnography shifted fundamentally through the use of the camera, learning about its advantages and challenges, and, more importantly, understanding the centrality of the researchers’ experience and embodied knowledge for theorising. This approach was highly informative and fundamentally shaped and enriched my analysis. Still, it also posed challenges, especially in writing the thesis illustrating the limitations of each medium - film and text - and how these two complement each other, allowing for a richer account of the multisensory experience of music performance and nationhood.