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- Convenors:
-
Paula Braz
(University of São Paulo - University of Barcelona)
Richard Fraser (Arctic University of Norway (UiT))
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Friday 4 July, -, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract
Multimodal anthropology offers distinct ways to address complex social realities. This panel will explore how anthropologists have been dealing with multimodality in order to deepen understanding of global issues, engage with communities in participatory ways and amplify marginalised voices.
Long Abstract
In an era marked by profound global challenges—from climate change, war, and forced displacement to social inequalities, mental health crises, and environmental degradation—anthropologists are increasingly turning to multimodal methods to engage in ethnographic action. Multimodality allows researchers to engage with communities and topics in dynamic, participatory ways, revealing dimensions of inequality, poverty, extremism, environmental threats and their intersectionalities that otherwise might remain obscured. But what are other implications of this shift? This panel welcomes contributions that examine critically the role of multimodal methods in addressing these issues. Particular questions that could be addressed include: How can multimodal anthropology offer new ways of representing and addressing social inequalities, particularly among marginalised groups? How might it contribute to engaging communities in the production of their own narratives? How does multimodality impact our ethnographic practices? Can these methods serve as tools for advocacy and policy change? How can multimodal representations of post-colonial contexts help dismantle the colonial gaze? What are the ethical and/or aesthetical challenges presented by these approaches? Through a turn to multimodality, how can museums and archives be used to empower communities, for instance, in indigenous contexts?
We invite ethnographers, visual anthropologists, and digital scholars to share how their work illuminates not only the complexities of these crises but also potential pathways toward peace, justice, and more sustainable futures. Through these discussions, we aim to uncover how, and if, multimodal anthropology can help reshape the role of anthropology in the global arena, fostering both critical awareness and tangible action.
Accepted papers
Session 1 Friday 4 July, 2025, -Paper short abstract
In this multimodal and collective research German+ Tanzanian Visual Anthropologists, artists and curators try to approach to engaging with the execution of 18 political leaders under German colonial occupation in 1900 and to understand its impact on debates of the return of ancestral remains.
Paper long abstract
The Paper introduces Kilichobaki as an example of ethnographic Action in Multimodal Anthropology and wants to reflect on the possibilities and challenges of collective research and a traunscultural and decolonial media practice.
One of the most traumatic events in Chagga history in Northern Tanzania was the mass execution on March 2, 1900, when 18 chiefs and leaders were hanged in Moshi for allegedly conspiring against German occupiers. In "Kilichobaki-what remains" german and tanzanian Visual Anthropologists, filmmakers, artists and curators try to approach to engaging with this concrete historical trauma and to understand what role it still plays today.
In 2022, the exhibition MAREJESHO (Swahili for return, restitution) traveled to six villages on Kilimanjaro and Meru as a mobile research exhibition to share knowledge and close the gap between German museums and the communities. The exhibition showed pictures of cultural assets stolen from the region as well as historical photos and provided information about collections of ancestral remains (human bones). Tanzanian artists accompanied MAREJESHO with live drawings, while the German tanzanian Bagamoyo Film Collective documented oral traditions and did an audiovisual research with the descendants and families of the chiefs, who were executed.
Through the travelling exhibition, curated encounters, workshops, audiovisual Documentation, filmic commentaries, Photography and Illustration the collective seeked out local and activist perspectives in the debate over the repatriation of colonial objects and the return of ancestral remains. In the dialogical research process, the tanzanian/german collective reflected on its own blind spots of the divided colonial past.
Paper short abstract
Sucúa Haven is a collaborative project exploring the Ecuadorian diaspora’s sense of belonging in Greater New Haven through multimodal methods. This paper examines circulation as central to its multimodality, highlighting its potential across contexts while questioning its possibilities and limits.
Paper long abstract
Sucúa Haven is a research-creation project that explores notions of belonging among Ecuadorians in New Haven, Connecticut (US). Its name originates from Sucúa, a city in the Ecuadorian Amazon where many collaborators originate.
Using interviews, performative ethnographic methods through staged photography, and photo-elicitation, the project represents, reinhabits, and reimagines the memories, dreams, and alternative lives of its participants. It investigates how this community navigates belonging and isolation through translocal and transtemporal experiences and imaginaries. The resulting collection of short stories creates a portrait of Sucúa Haven—a territory that is both the US and Ecuador.
Through its multimodal approach, the project positions imagination, through memories and fictions, as central dimensions for understanding migrant experiences. It moves beyond material realities to examine less-explored aspects such as affect, longing, and desire.
This paper critically reflects on the methodologies employed and their complementarity, with a focus on the circulation of its outputs across diverse spaces. These include academic institutions like Yale (US) and FLACSO (Ecuador), photographic publications, and community-oriented venues such as a popular restaurant in downtown New Haven and the Communal Hall in Sucúa, Ecuador. By centering circulation as a key element of multimodality, the project highlights its democratizing potential and ability to foster dialogue, address diverse audiences and move audiences across these contexts. Finally, the paper questions the sufficiency of these actions and asks: In what other ways could this project transcend into more tangible, actionable outcomes?
https://www.vanessa-teran.com/main-labs-1
Paper short abstract
In this paper, we will present how we in the Sahel on Sahel project work with community-generated filmmaking as ethnographic action, working with river nomads in the Malian side of the Niger River
Paper long abstract
Wherever you are along the Niger River, the Bozo people, the river nomads, have their settlements. Walking along the riverbanks, you will see the slender pirogues with a man at the front ready to cast the net with graceful movements, in search of the river's wealth.
The crisis in Mali has forced many Bozo from the central parts of the country into Bamako. The city is growing rapidly, the river is polluted, the demand for sand as building material is high, and the Bozo are now engaged in sand transport and gold mining on the riverbed. The living conditions for spawning fish are being destroyed.
In the establishment of a visual anthropology institutes in Niger, Cameroon and Niger, is the Sahel on Sahel project providing newly graduated anthropologists the opportunity to engage with their local communities and environments they know, in search of stories to tell by visual means. These young Malians know the communities. They know where to look, they know who live lives that carry stories.
In this paper, we will present how we in the Sahel on Sahel project work with community-generated filmmaking as ethnographic action to depict and analyze these phenomena.
Paper short abstract
Collaborative Multimodal Ethnography and Digital Storytelling: Methodological strategies to study the experiences and trajectories of recovering individuals in a therapeutic community in Portugal
Paper long abstract
This work explores the application of collaborative multimodal ethnography in the study of the trajectories and experiences of residents in a therapeutic community in Portugal. Grounded in the work of Sarah Pink (2015), who highlights multimodal ethnography as an approach to understanding complex contexts, the research adopts digital storytelling as part of the methodology. Inspired by Lambert (2013), who recognises digital stories as emancipating practices, the research developed weekly workshops that brought together photography, video recording, audio and editing.
Residents actively participated in the creation of narratives that reflect their experiences of identity (re)construction and social reintegration, challenging stigmas associated with drug addiction. The multimodal approach allowed to reveal often invisibilised dimensions, such as the emotional and social challenges in the recovery process. Moreover, the methodology sought to strengthen the participants' agency and creative expression.
This research aims to value residents' voices and contribute to the construction of collaborative ethnographic knowledge, fostering social inclusion and mental health in a collaborative environment. The work also reflects on the ethical challenges of representing experiences in therapeutic contexts non-extractively and sensitively.
By combining anthropology and digital narratives with therapeutic practices, this study highlights the importance of multimodal ethnography to address uncertainties in contexts of vulnerability, in order to promote resilience, social justice and understanding of recovery and social reintegration trajectories.