2024
Atlantic Anthropological Workshop 2024
Atlantic Anthropological
Antraipeolaíochta Atlantach
Directors: Dr. James Cuffe (UCC) & Dr. Fiona Murphy (DCU)
Administrators: Morgan Mattingly (QUB) & Peter Walsh (UCC)
Sacred Heart University, 19th, 20th & 21st April 2024
Dingle Campus, Daingean Uí Chúis, Co. Kerry, Ireland
Our Atlantic Anthropological workshop offers a multi-modal exploration of anthropology in its broadest sense. Set in the beautiful environs of the Dingle peninsula, participants will engage in contemporary theory and method with research-active scholars. The workshop is open to postgraduate students from anthropology and cognate disciplines. For 2024, our core faculty come from Sacred Heart University, University College Cork, Dublin City University, Queen’s University Belfast, with 12 more institutions contributing from North America and Europe.
Mode: 5 x plenary (10 hrs); 15 x masterclasses (17 hrs);
9 x reading groups (9 hrs), 1 x field trip (2 hrs)
Assessment: 1 x written assessment – optional, if credit needed via University College Cork, ECTS available, advise at registration.
Faculty: Tom Boland UCC , Tom Børsen AAU, Dominic Bryan QUB, Evi Chatzipanagiotidou QUB, Paul Clogher SETU, Dáithí de Mórdha SHU, Keith Egan IS, Ana Ivasuic EASA, Nasrin Khandoker UCC, Maria Loftus DCU, Billy Mag Fhloinn SHU, Iris Maher Mon, Nada Ní Churrín MU, Tríona Ní Shíocháin MU, Séamus Barra Ó Súilleabháin UCC, Kevin Power SHU, Gordon Ramsey QUB, Jolynna Sinanan UoM, Paul Stoller WCU, Rosalie Stolz UzK, Martin Toal DCU, Alisse Waterston CUNY
We look forward to welcoming you - go n-éirí an bóthar leat
This workshop is made possible thanks to the following generous sponsors:
Dingle Campus Office at Sacred Heart University
The CyberSocial Research Lab & School of Society Politics and Ethics at University College Cork
The School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at Queen's University Belfast
School of Applied Languages and Intercultural Studies, Dublin City University
The Irish Research Council
Atlantic Anthropological
Antraipeolaíochta Atlantach
Directors’ Welcome
In 2022, we inaugurated the Atlantic Anthropological workshop with the vision of moving beyond the limitations and confines of academia by fostering interdisciplinary connections and engaging with our peers both locally and globally through a student-centric event. The inaugural event's resounding success set a precedent, compelling us to continue with conviction and passion. Over the course of three years, the event has evolved, driven by an inherent energy, commitment and ethos.
Atlantic Anthropological workshop embodies a multifaceted, non-hierarchical, cross-disciplinary approach to intellectual exploration, mentorship and learning. It merges the rigour of a workshop and research-led teaching with the inclusivity and focus on learners typical of a conference. Yet, it distinguishes itself through creating classroom spaces that make knowledge tangible, experienced through movement, sound, creativity and engaging discussions. Our workshop fosters a sense of community and solidarity – emphasizing the importance of shared experiences and mutual support in navigating the complex terrain of our field, far beyond the conventional confines of textbooks and academic tropes.
We invite you to immerse yourself in this unique experience, to share your insights with others, and to return in future years, enriched and ready to contribute further. Your ongoing engagement is crucial and deeply valued, for this endeavour thrives on the collective goodwill and active participation of our growing community.
Warmly,
Fiona & James,
April 2024
Schedule
Arrival
09:00 – 13:00
Please arrive Friday morning between 9:00 and 13:00,
For MA Students staying in the Marina Cottages please let our organiser Peter Walsh know your estimated arrival time so that he can greet you and give you keys for the cottages.
The cottages are a 15 minute walk to the campus so please factor this into your timing for attending each day.
We kick off on Friday at 14:00.
Friday, 19th
14:00 MA Student Gathering on Campus at An Díseart - Morgan Mattingly (Top)
15:00 Break
15:30 Welcome to Atlantic Anthropological - Orientation –
James Cuffe & Fiona Murphy (Fresco)
16:00 Opening lecture: Ritual & Ceremony
P1: Old Rituals and New Needs Billy Mag Fhloinn (Fresco)
18:00 Close of Day 1
Please make your own social arrangements this evening.
Saturday 20th
09:00 Masterclasses A
A1: Bringing together the disparate - Maria Loftus and Fiona Murphy (Fresco)
A2: “Ireland’s Upanishads” - Kevin Power (Top)
A3: Body and Intuition - Keith Egan (POF)
10:15 Break
10:45 Masterclasses B
B1: CyberSocial Transformations in a Small Irish City - James Cuffe (Fresco)
B2: Ethnography, Public Anthropology and Research Impact - Dominic Bryan (Top)
B3: An Ethnographic Study of Homeless Support Workers - Martin Toal (POF)
12:00 Grab a bite
12:15 CyberSocial Huddle – James Cuffe – Benner’s Hotel (Invitees Only)
12:30 Directed Small Session A: DSS-1 / DSS-2 / DSS-3 / DSS-4 / DSS-5 / DSS-6
14:00 Keynote lecture
P2: Writing To Be Read - Alisse Waterston (Fresco)
15:30 Break
16:00 Ethnographic Excursion by bus with Dáithí de Mórdha
20:00 Performance Seminar and Salon (Courthouse Pub)
P3: Performance Seminar and Salon - Tríona Ní Síocháin, Séamus Barra Ó Súilleabháin & Nada Ní Chuirrín
Please make your own dinner arrangements this evening. There will be time between the return of the ethnographic excursion to grab a bite whether eating out or cooking in the cottages. We then reconvene in the Courthouse pub from 19:30 for a celebration of Irish culture old and new under the expert guidance of Tríona, Séamus and Nada. Come in good time to secure a good seat as this event will be open to the public so we aim to have our group in first and seated before we start.
Sunday 21st
09:00 Directed Small Sessions B: DSS-7 / DSS-8 / DSS-9 / DSS-10 / DSS-11 / DSS-12
10:00 Break
10.30 Masterclasses C
C1: Techno-Crisis, Techno-Activism & Technology Assessment - Tom Børsen (POF)
C2: Affectively Aware Ethnography with Nasrin Khandoker (Top)
C3: Intersectional Approaches to Social Class & Sectarian Identity - Gordon Ramsey (Fresco)
11:45 Break
12:15 Masterclasses D
D1: Navigating Uncertainty - Iris Maher (POF)
D2: Ethnographies of (In)security - Ana Ivasiuc (Fresco)
D3: The Anthropology of Time - Evi Chatzipanagiotidou (Top)
13:30 Lunch
14:00 Keynote Lecture
P3: Beyond the Mountain, More Mountains - Jolynna Sinanan (Fresco)
15:30 Break
15:45 Masterclasses E
E1: Ethnographic Writing Master Class with Paul Stoller (Fresco)
E2: ‘Don’t criticise what you can’t understand’? with Tom Boland (POF)
E3: Feuerbach’s Cinema with Paul Clogher (Top)
18:00 Parting Meal – James Long’s
Join us in James Long’s for a convivial meal provided by AA
20:00 Closing Ceremony with Billy Mag Fhloinn
P4: Music, Magic and Gratitude in McCarthy’s Pub
Plenary Sessions
P1: Old Rituals and New Needs
Billy Mag Fhlionn
This presentation explores the role of ritual and ceremony in contemporary culture, specifically focusing on Pagan Rave. This is an ongoing, performance-based project which aims to reimagine and repurpose the folk traditions and calendar customs of Ireland. It will examine the various sources of inspiration for the project, and the interface between art, academia, ceremony, tradition, and community.
Keynote 1
P2: Writing To Be Read:
Design, Discipline, Practices, and Experiments in Communicating Anthropological Knowledge
Alisse Waterston
In “Writing To Be Read,” Alisse Waterston discusses aspects of writing anthropology designed to venture beyond the confines of the ivory tower to engage with diverse audiences. She reflects upon the art and the craft, the whys and wherefores, the conceptions and creations, and the uses of new tools and technologies as scholars anticipate putting knowledge to public use in the interest of a more just world. Invoking her writing experiments with intimate ethnography and the graphic format, Waterston considers matters of commitment, motivation, inspiration, worries, writing habits, narrative strategy, and institutional constraints as anthropologists look to get people to read what they write. Underneath these efforts are various questions for discussion that may include: What is gained and what is lost in crafting works designed to stimulate, disturb and/or inspire?; What personal decisions and institutional principles and expectations are required to take a creative work of public anthropology from its initial conception to its fruition, and beyond that to its reception by readers in and outside of the academy.
Saturday Evening Salon
P3: Performance Seminar and Salon:
‘Embodied Orality, Gender, and Vernacular Creative Practices’
Nada Ní Chuirrín, Tríona Ní Shíocháin & Séamus Barra Ó Súilleabháin
This seminar and salon will intertwine creative practice performances with short talks and discussion on gender and vernacular arts practice including dance, music, song, narrative, oral poetry and associated performative practices in the Irish tradition. Three interweaving talks and accompanying performances will argue for the profound importance of what might be termed ‘embodied orality’, an aesthetic system and cultural practice fundamental to the generation of vernacular technique and style and systems of conceptual thought within the Irish tradition. Nada Ní Chuirrín will explore the embodied knowledges of sean-nós dance from the Connemara region, including the symbiosis between music and dancing. This will also include a theorisation of the performativity of gender through dance and a discussion of standardization of dance practices and the disciplining of the dancing body.
Tríona Ní Shíocháin will discuss the oral traditional creative practices of women song poets and women singers that existed independent of the written word. Focusing in particular on the re-compositional and re-creative practices of song, the representation of women’s voices and the use of creative practice as a disruptive space in which patriarchal norms can be contested will be discussed. This will then lead to Séamus Barra Ó Súilleabháin’s discussion of the work of Méiní, the mid-wife of the Blasket Islands, and her representation through the work of the poet, Maidhc File, a son of the renowned storyteller, Peig Sayers. Here the representation of women’s voices through the intricate re-creative practices of orality will be explored, and the inherent power of oral poetic performance discussed.
Talk and discussion will be kept free-flowing and informal, inviting dialogue with attendees, and will be interspersed with performances from these three scholar-performers, a celebration of the disruptive power of underground un(der)documented embodied knowledges of orality.
Keynote 2
P4: Beyond the mountain, more mountains:
A reflection on motivation for anthropology today
Jolynna Sinanan
What motivates an emerging generation of anthropologically trained professionals in uncertain times? The contemporary moment is defined by ecological and geopolitical crises that reshape orientations towards precarious futures. Anthropologists embarking on their careers in the 2020s face a different landscape to previous generations whose legacies they have inherited, continue and challenge. In this keynote address, Jolynna Sinanan will argue that emerging and early-career anthropologists can (and must) remain motivated amidst the rampant uncertainty of the unfolding of the 21st century. She will draw on key ways of thinking in the anthropology of futures and ethics and her continuing research in the Solukhumbu (Everest) region in Nepal to demonstrate the potentials of the sensibilities and practicalities of gaining anthropological knowledge to collaborate towards realising individual and collective aspirations.
Closing Rites
To celebrate the end of another Atlantic Anthropological we gather for evening meal at 18:00 sharp in James Long’s Restaurant followed by quick reassembly for music and more celebrations in McCarthys Pub. Please arrive from 17:45.
P5: Music, Magic and Gratitude in McCarthy’s Pub
Billy Mag Fhloinn
In what is now an annually cherished musical farewell we convene in the back room of McCarthy’s pub. No more description is offered, this is to be heard and felt.
Masterclasses
** Choose one from Group A, B, C, D, & E **
A1: Bringing together the disparate:
leveraging creativity in the codesign of an anti-racism graphic novel
Maria Loftus and Fiona Murphy
This paper seeks to share the processes involved in the co-design of a graphic novel, created by Ballymun Youthreach students, International Protection Applicants (IPAs) and student trainee teachers. It is the fruit of six workshops, facilitated by Fighting Words and other creativity activists with the aim of looking at how anti-racist educational and creative resources can be co-created, leveraged and scaled to build capacity in intercultural competencies and social inclusion. The bringing together of the three cohorts as co-creators, changemakers and adult allies requires lateral thinking, improvised recalibration and inclusive non-hierarchical pedagogy. An oft ignored liminal space comes to the fore on the pages of the graphic novel. A shared place of belonging, projected or real, takes shape. By examining the creative processes and resultant graphic novel, a model for the dissolution of essentialism and cultural nationalism will be disseminated. Attendees will be encouraged to collaboratively take part in the creation of a micro-graphic novel, illustrating how this template can be used to leverage intercultural dialogue.
A2 “Ireland’s Upanishads”: The Native Wisdom of John Moriarty’s Six Stories
Kevin Power
In Crossing the Kedron Irish writer and philosopher John Moriarty dives into the lived experience of rural Ireland and resurfaces with stories not of poverty and hardship but of wisdom, spiritual and ecological interconnection, and unique reflections on the human condition. This masterclass will demonstrate the intellectual value of reflecting on rural Irish heritage; the stories and lessons encoded within, the comparison with other cultural contexts, and the insights which can be gained from ‘simple’, non-academic storytelling. Moriarty’s vast knowledge of world religions and spiritual traditions created a grounding for the expression of universal concerns through local storytelling. In the absence of a traditional sacred text, Moriarty presents the Six Stories as “Ireland’s Upanishads”, identifying rural Irish life as a context for exploring the search for meaning that is common to all human societies.
A3 Body and Intuition
Keith Egan
Meanings, Tim Ingold reminds us, are often made in motion. In contrast to the static, cognitive Cartesian ego, it is more fruitful to consider our being, in terms of dynamic flows of intuition in the world and on the move. Thus, we can learn ourselves more truly at the nexus between ability and transcendence. Moreover, having such insights granted us through more a fertile starting point as “I cannot, therefore I am” humbles us, in the sense of grounding us in ourselves. When we practice this penumbral exploration with others, then, the benefits are put to work in making and remaking self, culture and world. This workshop will explore the possibilities of edge-work through movement, specifically forms of preparation to practise Tai Chi with others, where we will plumb the potential for understanding how ‘being’ can be built out of ‘being present’, to self, others and world, by exploring the limits of our bodies and our attention. Such insights are of benefit to us as human beings who are becoming and who make meanings on the move. They also, however, hold some implications for how we practise ethnographic engagement, where the anxieties of our presence and attention can be deployed in grounding our practice in a deeper method.
B1: CyberSocial Transformations in a Small Irish City
James Cuffe
This lecture will describe and present initial reflections from ongoing research by the CyberSocial Research Lab at UCC, funded by the Irish Research Council. This research concerns the digital transitions in urban living, examining how new cyber and digital technologies are (or not) integrated into everyday life. Economic drivers, through chasing efficiency, extraction of value, rationalisation of workflows, and automation of mundane tasks, present a certain vision for our social futures. All such themes carry clear potential benefits but also potential risks that receive poor attention until these risks are realised once new processes are socially and politically embedded. Once social risks are embedded, they are hard to mitigate. Such a scenario is described by Collingridge’s methodological quandary in the Dilemma of Control. How might we circumvent this double-bind? How can we mitigate against future unknown social injustices as yet another technological paradigm unfolds? This lecture hypothesizes that - drawing upon Simondon and Hui – by reimaging our technosocial assemblages as dynamic patterns we can ‘liberate’ technology from its slavery to humanity.
B2: Ethnography, Public Anthropology and Research Impact
Dominic Bryan
There is an increasing demand for research to have ‘impact’ outside the confines of academia. This class will explore (1) the utility of ethnography in creating impactful research; (2) the methods that offer an engaged research agenda; (3) the issues of conducting a public anthropology. Drawing on 30 years of experience of working on a peace process in Northern Ireland I will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of anthropological approaches to policy, with reference to debates on public space around parades, flags and bonfires. Included in the topics will be: (1) working with the state; (2) working with local groups; (3) utilising human rights approaches; and (4) dealing with the strange stare you get form people if you tell them, you are an anthropologist.
B3:
An ethnographic study of homeless support workers in a not-for-profit homeless organisation in the Republic of Ireland: Challenges, Pitfalls and Findings.
Martin Toal
This presentation will describe a focused ethnographic study of homeless support workers in Focus Ireland, a not-for-profit homeless organisation in the Republic of Ireland, and the challenges they face in supporting culturally diverse clients. Firstly, I will describe the practical challenges of setting up and conducting an ethnographic study. In particular, the discussion centres on the use of participant observations, some of which took place in a small space where note taking proved impossible. I will be discussing a number of solutions to this challenge and their effectiveness. The second part of the presentation involves a discussion of the findings generated from the participant observations and a number of group interviews of Focus Ireland staff in the Republic of Ireland. Themes include: the challenges faced by support workers during home visits, challenges encountered by support workers in attempting to combat racist behaviour or discrimination by various actors such as neighbours or private landlords; and the need to develop good language competence, both verbal and non-verbal on the part of not-for profit homeless support workers who support culturally diverse clientele.
C1:
Techno-Crisis, Techno-Activism and Technology Assessment in Techno-Anthropology
Tom Børsen
In this presentation I will introduce how we enact Techno-Anthropology at Aalborg University as a study program and as a research area. The Techno-Anthropological triangle and the concept of Techno-Crisis are used to explain how we understand technology as dialectical socio-technical phenomenon, enframed by artifact, users, and experts. The concept of Techno-Activism is used to unfold participatory approaches to Techno-Anthropology with a focus on empowerment and inclusion. Technology Assessment is used to explore how normative positions and eclectic approaches can inform Techno-Anthropology. Two techno-anthropological projects, supported by the Innovation Fund Denmark, will exemplify some of my points. One project deals with an AI decision support tools in radiology clinics, the other project addresses P2X production and storing facilities at the Port of Rønne. I am curious to learn how you approach technologies in your projects. Thus, after my presentation we will discuss how to engage with technologies in research.
C2: Affectively Aware Ethnography:
Embodied Emotion and ‘Becoming the woman’ of Bhawaiya folk songs of Bengal.
Nasrin Khandoker
My ethnographic research investigating the deviant and defiant desires of women from a subjective position as expressed through the Bangla folk song genre of Bhawaiya, was inseparable from my own subjective emotion and affect. As a Bangladeshi woman, the dynamic of my subjectivity and belonging-ness was rooted in the history of the Bhawaiya areas and the emotions that it carries. In my ethnography, I situate myself in the affective relation with the female subjects of the songs as well as with the Bhawaiya practitioners of both genders to understand the subjectivity of 'becoming the woman of Bhawaiya' through experiencing the performances. By participating in the day-to-day rehearsals and less formal performances of the Bhawaiya singers, I as a researcher became an inseparable part of the emotional atmosphere that they create. The emotions of the women of the songs are evoked by the performers, moved through the music, connecting the bodies of the participants and creating temporal embodied subjectivities. Hence, to analyse the 'becoming the woman' subject of Bhawaiya by the performers, my subjective emotion and affect was not only limited to the ethical perspective of 'reflexivity' of the ethnography but became an integral part of the ethnographic knowledge production. In this paper, I will show that my subjective participation is not an obstacle to the ethnographic knowledge production, but rather contributes to the methodological and epistemological knowledge in anthropology. The intersubjective connection between myself and the field composed of the people, place and its materiality contributes to affectively aware scholarship of anthropology.
C3: Intersectional Approaches to Social Class and Sectarian Identity:
Lessons from Northern Ireland
Gordan Ramsey
Sectarianism in Northern Ireland has no defenders. Those from every part of the political spectrum condemn it and deny being sectarian, whilst alleging that their opponents are. Nevertheless, the sectarian divide structures virtually all political, cultural and social life in the province. Sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland has challenged both liberal and Marxist analyses, resulting in Northern Ireland being labelled an anachronistic “place apart”, where upon arrival, visitors should turn their watches back to 1690. A particular problem for Marxian theorists has been that sectarian allegiances are most enthusiastically embraced and fiercely defended by working-class groups, which, according to orthodox Marxist theory, are most disadvantaged by them. In this discussion, I first define sectarianism and considers its relationship to other forms of discrimination, particularly racism. I then consider the relationship between social class and sectarian solidarity with particular attention to working-class loyalism. I go on to apply the insights developed in Ulster to analogous relations between class and sectarian identities in contexts outside Northern Ireland, suggesting that the durability of sectarian solidarity can be explained by its effectiveness as a form of class politics.
D1: Navigating Uncertainty:
Everyday Transport with Families of Children with Disability in Australia
Iris Maher
Imagine you cannot leave your home. Why? Because of a car seat. This is the reality for children with disability and their families. In Australia, transport for children with disability is managed by various governmental and non-governmental agencies, many of which are under no obligation to communicate with one another. As a result, the process by which parents of children with disability organise their child’s daily transport is more difficult than it should be, especially when it comes to child car seats. In this session we will follow one family's journey in the search to find, fund, and legally use a car seat.
D2: Ethnographies of (In)security: Challenging Ethnography
Ana Ivasiuc
In this master class, I will rely on fieldwork storytelling from my ethnography of formal and informal policing of the Roma in the peripheries of Rome. I will discuss two ethnographic issues: first, the challenges of studying (in)security ethnographically, in our security-saturated world; and second, how such ethnographies in difficult and conflict-ridden settings challenge our ethnographic textbook expectations on the coherence and smoothness of fieldwork itself. I will recount stories from my encounters and research with a far-right group and a special police unit that illustrate the various meanings of “challenging ethnography”. If ethnography is “the art of the possible”, as Ulf Hannerz put it, how can one patch together ethnography in challenging contexts?
D3: The Anthropology of Time
Evi Chatzipanagiotidou
Do we all experience time in the same way? Is there one time or different temporalities across cultures and societies? How does time relate to space? In this session, we will discuss critical anthropological approaches to time and temporality. We will deal with time as a social experience and political tool that is embedded in and reproduces power dynamics and inequalities. We will also examine why anthropologists have privileged the past at the expense of the future in their analysis of temporal practices and experiences. By drawing on my own ethnographic engagement with time in the contexts of migration, displacement and diasporas, I will encourage you to think about how anthropological approaches to time can be utilised in your own work and critical analyses.
E1: Ethnographic Writing Master Class: Writing Space and Place
Paul Stoller
The aim of this master class is to introduce anthropology students to the fundamental features and essential practices of ethnography writing in the contemporary world. During the workshop students will learn how to evoke space and place— essential elements in ethnographic representation. Put another way, the instructor will ask students to write culture and learn some of the "tricks of the trade.” How do you describe a river, a house, a pathway, a tree? What memories are embedded in spaces? What "wisdom sits in places?" As a writing exercise, the master class students will then describe a space/place that is, in one way or another, important to them. In the spirit of collaboration that is so intrinsic to writing communities, the students will then present for constructive commentary their evocations space/place. In this way future writers of ethnography can develop the skills that enable the they to produce ethnographic texts that can remain "open to the world."
E2: ‘Don’t criticise what you can’t understand’?:
The problem of researching the culture wars.
Tom Boland
Contemporary (modern, western) culture wars are so all-encompassing that there are no sidelines to remain on, nor any ‘fence’ left in the middle. Everything is politicised, even and especially any attempt to resist or remain outside the fray. Every position has its opposite, every movement has a backlash and everyone is criticised. Yet, by taking an anthropological focus on understanding rather than criticising others, it is possible to research this all-encompassing and all-transforming cultural phenomenon. Using digital ethnography and discourse analysis, it is possible to clarify the meanings, values and stakes of seemingly interminable, cacophonous disputes.
E3: Feuerbach’s Cinema: Theology and (as) Anthropology in Three Films
Paul Clogher
From the publication of Ludwig Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity (1841) and perhaps long before, there has been a rich history of exchange between theology and anthropology. In this session, we consider aspects of this relationship through the prism of three films: Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema (1968); Nicholas Roeg’s The Man who Fell to Earth (1976); and Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). Each explores aspects of how culture, lifeworld, spirituality, and faith intersect in and through diverse cultural and historical worlds. Cinema is a cultural artefact that visualizes meaning and mirrors the religious/social situation of its time, but it is equally a symbolic and poetic medium that not only mirrors but mediates and perhaps reveals an otherness. This session explores these meeting points as ways of understanding Feuerbach’s often quoted but sometimes misunderstood slogan: ‘theology is anthropology.’
Field Excursion
**As Irish weather on the wild Atlantic coast can be unpredictable,
bring waterproofs and sun protection.**
Ethnographic Excursion
People & Place on the Dingle Peninsula
Dáithí de Mórdha
This excursion will bring students on a guided tour of the environs around Dingle. Dáithí will discuss the impact of the landscape on its people and of the people on the landscape.
Directed Small Sessions
**Choose one from group A and one from group B**
A-DSS-1. Translating the More-Than-Human, Lucy McSweeney
This session will discuss more sustainable and ethical ways of engaging and communicating with the contemporary more-than-human world in the Anthropocene through the lens of posthumanism, translation and eco-translation.
Barcz, A., & Cronin, M. (2023). Eco-Translation and Interspecies Communication in the Anthropocene. In S. E. Wilmer & A. Zukauskaite (Eds.), Life in the Posthuman Condition: Critical Responses to the Anthropocene (pp. 130-148). Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press. (NO link, will send pdf to those in the group)
Di Giminiani, P., & Haines, S. (2020). Introduction: Translating Environments. Ethnos, 85(1), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2018.1542409
A-DSS-2: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words, Jennifer Ahern
Anthropology has a long history of using visual methods in ethnographic research. Using the medium of collage, this practical workshop will explore the power and potential of the image as a visual ethnographic method. “Collage often brings disparate elements together and can be a powerful way of jarring people into thinking and seeing differently, performing cultural critique, producing connections that would otherwise remain out of reach, inferring new associations or refining or enhancing meanings” (Levy 2015:235). Participants will have a fun introduction to the potential of collage as a creative methodology and method through the art of making, connection and discussion. We will explore both the potentials of collage as data and as an ethnographic method and how these can be applied in different research contexts. No previous creative experience required and all materials will be provided.
Leavy, Patricia. 2015. ‘The Visual Arts’, chap in Method Meets Art: Arts-Based Research Practice. p224-247 Second ed. New York; London : The Guilford Press.
A-DSS-3: Participatory Action Research (PAR) and ‘deep hanging out’: Ways of Knowing & Community Action, Morgan Mattingly
PAR, as a methodology, is goal oriented. It requires working together with a community to examine a problem with goal of addressing it for the better through ‘knowledge’ co-produced with a community. Rooted in Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” knowledge is produced in solidarity with action. However, when utilising such methodology there are many challenges which must be considered. This reading group will creatively consider constraints of PAR research: time, trust, control, credibility, reciprocity, etc.
Tritz, J. (2014) ‘Participatory Research : A Tool for Extension Educators’, The Journal of Extension, 52(4), pp. 1–3.
Dedding, C. and Goedhart, N. S. (2021) ‘Exploring the boundaries of “ good ” Participatory Action Research in times of increasing popularity : dealing with constraints in local policy for digital inclusion’, Educational Action Research, 29(1), pp. 20–36.
A-DSS-4: God’s Eye: Perspectival Shifts in the Pursuit of Meaning, Kevin Power
If a crisis of meaning is one of the ailments of contemporary life, then what might a substantial shift in perspective teach us about our individual and collective motivations for how we live? This session constitutes an imaginative reorientation from multiple perspectives: the mass extinctions of Earth’s past which facilitated the development of human life, what it might be like to ‘be’ a non-conscious entity like a virus, and the notion of cosmological extinction in the form of the heat-death of the universe. By momentarily inhabiting these perspectives, how might we recontextualise our priorities as a species once we return to the here-and-now of the human experience?
No Readings
A-DSS-5: Why are older people using smartphones? Priyanka Borpujari
“Digital technologies are alien to older people.” “Older people use digital technology only for medical emergencies.” “Older people don’t have fun.” How true are each of these statements? Do we recognize our grandparents in any of these statements? In this reading group—based on the facilitator’s ongoing research in the intersection of genders, ageing and social media—we will discuss the different ways in which certain populations are excluded or typecast in specific research agendas.
“Why It is Easier to Slay a Dragon Than to Kill a Myth About Older People’s Smartphone Use” https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05581-2_16
“Communication Predicaments of Aging: Patronizing Behavior towards Older Adults” https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X95141008
A-DSS-6: There’s no place like home, Molly McGrath
In this reading group, we will explore our relationships with and conceptualisations of home. What feelings, imagery, or senses are evoked when imagining one’s homeplace? What role do material aspects play in this construction? The design choices that transform the structures in which we dwell from house to home will be discussed and compared to definitions of the home beyond its physical structure. Considering what it means for one to feel “at home”, or why one whose home is a tent might be considered “homeless,” we will contemplate classifications of the home across cultures, places, spaces, time, feelings, and practices.
de Botton, A., 2007. The Significance of Architecture. In: The Architecture of Happiness. CA: Penguin Books.
Han, C. 2012 "La Pincoya and Relatedness" in Introduction. In Life in Debt: Times of Care and Violence in Neoliberal Chile. London: University of California Press, pp. 11-19.
B-DSS-7: The Gesture in Everyday Life: Poetics, Politics, Affect. Sara O’Rourke
In The Minor Gesture, Erin Manning explores alternative ways of moving and being moved by the world, in our experiencing of the world(s). By examining how small gestures can play a role in political action and agency she develops a theory that includes the role of the minor gesture in social change with a focus on autistic perception. If, as she contends, ‘in its movement, the minor gesture creates sites of dissonance, staging disturbances that open experience to new modes of expression’ (Manning 2016, 2) how might we as anthropologists consider the affect of embodied research, and its potential disturbances. We will read together and explore gestures in everyday life.
Manning, Erin. The Minor Gesture. Duke University Press, 2016. Introduction & Chapter 3: ‘Weather Patterns, or How Minor Gestures Entertain the Environment’
B-DSS-8: Storytelling as Practice and with Purpose, Brianna Griesinger
This reading group considers the role of storytelling in modern political contexts, focussing on the present-day global feminist movement. We will ask: How do stories mobilise? How can stories enact justice? Participants will discuss the vast range of storytelling mediums used by activists globally and how those practices can impact social justice goals differently. From ‘artivism’ and performance street art to testimony we will reflect on storytelling as integral to feminist pedagogy.
Serafini, P., (2020) A rapist in your path: Transnational feminist protest and why (and how) performance matters, European Journal of Cultural Studies, 23(2), pp. 290-295,
Wånggren, L., (2016) Our stories matter: storytelling and social justice in the Hollaback! Movement, Gender and Education, 28(3), pp. 401-415,
B-DSS-9: Displacement Research and Gatekeeping, Gordon Ogutu
One of the challenges of conducting research in marginalised communities like refugees is overcoming the gatekeepers who exist within the refugee and host communities and the governing institutions as well. While gatekeepers can play a significant role in research by preventing exploitative research, speeding up recruitment of participants, acting as cultural mediators and ensuring the researcher’s legitimacy within the community (de Laine, 2000; McAreavey and Das, 2013), they can also impede accessing minority or marginalised participants. However, gatekeepers can negatively impact the research by imposing their own realities and providing the same participants approved only by themselves. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Kakuma refugee camps and Kalobeyei Integrated refugee Settlement in North-Western Kenya, this reading group will discuss the various levels involved in ethnographic research, the ethical considerations, and research strategies to overcome gatekeeping challenges before, during and after fieldwork.
de Laine, M. (2000) ‘Fieldwork, Participation and Practice: Ethics and Dilemmas in Qualitative Research’, pp. 1–240.
McAreavey, R. and Das, C. (2013) ‘A Delicate Balancing Act: Negotiating with Gatekeepers for Ethical Research When Researching Minority Communities’, International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 12(1), pp. 113–131.
B-DSS-10: The Seen and Unseen of Northern Ireland - Understanding Field Sites with an Anthropological Lens, Charlie Finucane
Northern Ireland has been a state surrounded by strife and division, with the infrastructure of Belfast designed around this pressing problem. This reading group intends to examine the less ‘obvious’ barriers of how spaces are constructed and used to lay claim to areas or make them ‘safer’. Examining architecture, nature, and infrastructure through an anthropological lens can help to better understand your field sites and why simple design choices can noticeably change the dynamic of an area.
Coyles,D. Hamber, B. & Grant, A. (2021) 'Hidden barriers and divisive architecture: The role of “everyday space” in conflict and peacebuilding in Belfast', Journal of Urban Affairs, (), pp. 1-24.
Lang, L. and Mell, I. (2020) 'I stick to this side of the park: Parks as shared space in contemporary Belfast', Nature and Space, 3(2), pp. 203-526.
B-DSS-11: Qualitative Insights and Assessment Models for AI, Maria Bach Nielsen
Through a techno-anthropological lens, we will explore the field of qualitative research within the adoption of AI-based decision support systems in clinical settings. Participants will engage in critical discussions on the benefits of rapid ethnography, assessment models, and the importance of including the broader socio-technical dynamics in the transition toward AI-enabled healthcare.
Kim, B., Romeijn, S., van Buchem, M., Mehrizi, M.H.R. and Grootjans, W., 2024. A holistic approach to implementing artificial intelligence in radiology. Insights into Imaging, 15(1), p.22.
Fasterholdt, I., Kjølhede, T., Naghavi-Behzad, M., Schmidt, T., Rautalammi, Q.T., Hildebrandt, M.G., Gerdes, A., Barkler, A., Kidholm, K., Rac, V.E. and Rasmussen, B.S., 2022. Model for ASsessing the value of Artificial Intelligence in medical imaging (MAS-AI). International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care, 38(1), p.e74.
B-DSS-12: Sound, sociality, & place, Sharonne Specker
Our identities and relationships to place and memory are shaped through various embodied channels, of which sound is one. How can we explore the connections between sound, place, and subject? How can attention to these sonic dimensions of social life broaden our ethnographic knowledge, and help us think about identity-making processes? This session will invite us to think through the complex dimensions of locality and experiences of place as they intersect with memory, sociality, citizenship, and selfhood. If you wish, bring a sound clip or piece of music that reminds you of a particular place.
Feld, S. 1996. “Waterfalls of Song: An Acoustemology of Place Resounding in Bosavi, Papua New Guinea.” In Senses of Place (eds.) S. Feld and K. H. Basso, 91-135. Seattle: School of American Research Press. [excerpt: read p. 91-98 - remainder is optional]
Sumartojo, S. 2017. “Making Sense of Everyday Nationhood: Traces in the Experiential World.” In Everyday Nationhood: Theorising Culture, Identity and Belonging After Banal Nationalism, (eds.) M. Skey and M. Antonsich, 197-214. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan
Atlantic Anthropological Team for 2024
Directors
Dr. James Cuffe is an anthropologist and IRC Laureate currently working on a 3 year ethnographic project on digital urban transitions at the CyberSocial Research Lab in University College Cork. His previous work includes ethnographic research in Shanghai on the effects of mediative technologies in social change published as a monograph with Routledge - China at a Threshold (2021). He is particularly motivated in rinsing out ideas from the philosophy of technology with ethnographic work. He is co-convenor of the European Digital Anthropology Network and was General Editor of the Irish Journal of Anthropology 2014-2019.
Dr. Fiona Murphy is an anthropologist based in SALIS in Dublin City University. As an anthropologist of displacement, she works with Stolen Generations in Australia and people seeking asylum and refuge in Ireland, the United Kingdom and Turkey. She has a particular passion for creative and public anthropologies and is always interested in experimenting with new forms and genres. She is co-author of Integration in Ireland: The everyday life of African migrants in Ireland (Manchester Uni Press: 2012).
Faculty
Dr. Tom Boland is Head of Department of Sociology and Criminology, UCC. His main research interests are in critique, culture unemployment and welfare. His work draws on multiple disciplines, from anthropology through to philosophy, and in particular, historical genealogies of the present - particularly the governmentality of welfare and the discourse of critique. Also, he is a cultural sociologist, with interests in literary theory and cultural studies. He is the co-director of the Economy + Society Summer School with Dr. Ray Griffin (WIT), and similarly the WUERC group.
Dr. Tom Børsen is an Associate Professor at Aalborg University, where he is a member of the research group in Techno-Anthropology and Participation (TAPAR). His research clusters around three aspects of Responsible Technological Innovation: Ethical technology assessment, robust technologies through action research, and teaching responsibility in STEM. He teaches many of these aspects at the BSc and MSc programs in Techno-Anthropology, which he co-founded in 2011.
Prof. Dominic Bryan is Professor of Anthropology at Queen’s University Belfast, known for his contributions to the field of conflict transformation and identity politics. He was Director of the Institute of Irish Studies (QUB) from 2002-2016; co-chair of the all-party Commission on Flags, Identity, Culture and Tradition (2016-2020); and is presently Chair of the Short Working Group Reviewing Processions in Scotland (2022-). Dominic’s research interests include political rituals, symbols, public space, commemoration and memory. He is presently working on a project exploring the persistence of paramilitarism in Northern Ireland and shared spaces in Belfast.
Dr. Evi Chatzipanagiotidou is an anthropologist at Queen's University Belfast. Her research interests focus on the study of migration and diasporas, conflict-induced displacement, time and temporality, and the politics of memory and loss. Evi has carried out field research in Cyprus, Greece, the United Kingdom and Turkey and has published widely on topics such as the relations between memory and history in Cyprus, the political role of the Cypriot diaspora in issues of rapprochement and reunification, youth migration and labour precarity in Southern Europe, and the politics of silence(s) and loss through Syrian refugee artworks.
Dr. Paul Clogher lectures in Theology and Religious Studies at South East Technological University, Waterford, where he is co-director of the Spirituality in Society and the Professions research group. His research interests focus on cultural theology and the relationship between theology and cinema.
Prof. Dáithí de Mórdha is an ethnologist and historian from Co. Kerry, Ireland. He attained a degree in History & Irish from NUI Galway in 2005, a master’s degree in Ethnology from University College Cork in 2012, and a PhD in Ethnology from UCC in 2019. He is currently adjunct instructor in History & Anthropology in SHU Campus Dingle. His areas of interest includes Folk Memory, Indigenous Knowledge and Verbal Artforms, Oral & Folk History, and Visual Anthropology. He is also interested in ideas and concepts of race, and in how to use folk memory and oral history to inform historical research and teaching. He is a former Director of the Great Blasket Heritage Centre in West Kerry, a Centre dedicated to the memory of the people of the Blasket Islands.
Dr. Keith Egan works on European pilgrimage itineraries such as the Camino de Santiago and Medjugorje, and his research interests include philosophical approaches to reading contemporary religious phenomena and practices in the wake of seemingly declining engagement with historically popular religious forms.
Dr. Ana Ivasiuc works on urban insecurity, formal and informal policing, security practices of the far-right in Europe, and the securitization of Roma groups. She carried out ethnographic research in the peripheries of Rome, where she observed the racial policing of the Roma, as well as grassroots practices of informal policing. Since 2020, she is a co-convener of the Anthropology of Security network. She is currently President of the European Association of Social Anthropologists.
Dr. Nasrin Khandoker is a Post-doc researcher in the CyberSocial project. She received her PhD in Anthropology from Maynooth University and has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Limerick and Galway University. Before coming to Ireland, she was an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at Jahangirnagar University. She received a Wenner-Gren Wadsworth fellowship from US and John and Pat Hume scholarship from Maynooth University for her PhD, awarded in 2021. She has written articles for academic and public readers about feminisms, gender and sexuality, and human rights. Her research interests are gender and sexuality, migration, emotion and affect, embodiment and post-colonial critiques.
Dr. Maria Loftus lectures in French language and literature in the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies (SALIS). Her research interests pertain to representations of alterity in Sub-Saharan Documentary Cinema, multimodality and Second Language Acquisition and more recently creative co-designs around the theme of displacement.
Prof. Billy Mag Fhloinn is a folklorist with Sacred Heart University. As well as lecturing and tutoring at university level, he also works with Irish television for RTÉ or TG4, but occasionally for international productions, including the BBC, PBS and the National Geographic Channel. He is an accomplished musician and occasionally works as a tour guide in the Dingle Peninsula. He has taught courses with Sacred Heart University in Dingle in Celtic Religion and Mythology as well as Irish Folklore and History since 2014. Billy’s scholarly interests include pre-Christian religious practices and beliefs, prehistoric archaeology, and folk practices of early modern Ireland. In 2016 he published a book entitled Blood Rite: The Feast of St. Martin in Ireland.
Dr. Iris Maher is a social anthropologist interested in how the design of objects and systems is experienced by its users. Her PhD research was based on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork investigating the design and use of car seats for children with disability in Australia. Her fieldwork examined the uncertainty parents experience when faced with the organisational and institutional barriers to funding and sanctioning the use of devices which are necessary for their everyday travel. Iris holds a PhD from the Emerging Technologies Lab at Monash University.
Nada Ní Chuirrín is a sean-nós dancer, Irish traditional musician and PhD candidate on the Modern-Irish (Artistic Research) programme at Maynooth University. She is currently lecturer in Modern Irish in the School of Celtic Studies in Maynooth. She was awarded a John and Pat Hume scholarship for her doctoral research entitled ‘Brí, Taibhléiriú agus Ceist na hInscne i dTraidisiún an Damhsa ar an Sean-nós i gConamara’/ ‘Gender, Performance and Meaning in the Sean-nós Dancing Tradition of Connemara’. In 2018, Nada won Corn TG4, the senior sean-nós dancing competition at Oireachtas na Samhna.
Prof. Tríona Ní Shíocháin is an interdisciplinary scholar of Music and Irish, and a whistle-player, singer, and set-dancer. She was appointed Professor of Modern Irish and Performing Arts at Maynooth University in 2021, where she is currently Head of the School of Celtic Studies, prior to which she was Head of the Department of Music and Lecturer in Irish Traditional Music at University College Cork. She is author of Bláth's Craobh na nÚdar: Amhráin Mháire Bhuí (2012) and Singing Ideas: Performance, Politics and Oral Poetry (2018; published 2021). She is deeply interested in embodied knowledges, oral composition, transmission and performance in the work of women poet-composers and singers, and in the alternative histories of thought embodied in vernacular arts practices.
Dr. Séamus Barra Ó Súilleabháin holds a PhD from Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, for his thesis entitled 'An Seanachaidhe agus an Sgríobhneóir: Seanchas agus samhlaíocht san ábhar a bhailigh Mícheál Ó Gaoithín ó Mháire 'Méiní' Ní Shé' [‘The storyteller and the writer: narrative and imagination in material collected by Mícheál Ó Gaoithín from Máire ‘Méiní’ Ní Shé’]. He spent a year working as a tour guide in the Blasket Centre in Dunquin and he regularly teaches on Summer courses in Áras Bhréanainn in Ballyferriter. He is currently lecturer in Modern Irish at University College Cork. He is also a song composer and poet, and his work can be heard online under the name ‘Súil Amháin’.
Dr. Kevin Power received his PhD in Philosophy from University College Cork in 2015. He has lectured in philosophy of mind, environmental ethics, philosophy of death and dying, as well as writing and delivering a unique module entitled 'The Philosophy of Interdependence' for UCC's Adult Continuing Education programme, and teaching Bioethics at the Dingle campus of Sacred Heart University. His research interests are philosophy of mind (in particular metaphysics of self), ecology, mysticism and the Irish philosopher John Moriarty.
Dr. Gordon Ramsey. After a varied career including serving as an infantry soldier and working as a motorcycle mechanic and archeological guide, Dr. Ramsey entered Queen’s University as an undergraduate in 2001 and went on to complete a PhD there in 2009. He has been teaching at Queen’s ever since and is currently a Lecturer in Anthropology and Ethnomusicology. His research focuses on traditional musics in Northern Ireland with a focus on the intersection of ethnic identity and social class and his book, Music, Emotion and Identity in Ulster Marching Bands was published by Peter Lang in 2011.
Dr Jolynna Sinanan is a Lecturer in Digital Anthropology in the Department of Social Anthropology and the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in Trinidad, Nepal, Australia and Cambodia and has published widely on digital and data practices, digital visual communication, intergenerational mobilities, work and gender. Her books include Social Media in Trinidad (2017), Visualising Facebook (with D. Miller 2017) and Digital Media Practices in Households (with L. Hjorth et al. 2021). Jolynna's current research is developing a long-term ethnography of the Everest economy.
Dr. Paul Stoller is currently Permanent Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences at Friedrich Alexander University (FAU) Erlanger-Nuremberg. For the past 15 years, Stoller, the author of 16 books, has facilitated ethnographic writing workshops in Europe, West Africa and the US. In 2013 King Carl Gustav of Sweden awarded him the Anders Retzius Gold Medal in Anthropology. In 2015 the American Anthropological Association presented him the Anthropology in Media Award. His most recent book is Wisdom from the Edge: Writing Ethnography in Turbulent Times.
Dr. Martin Toal is a lecturer in both intercultural studies and English as a second or other language (ESOL) in the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies at Dublin City University (DCU), Ireland. He is also the chairperson of the BA in Social Sciences and Cultural Innovation at DCU. His research interests include issues pertaining to intercultural communication and competence; He has a particular interest in the application of ethnography to issues relating to the integration of culturally diverse groups in new host society settings.
Prof. Alisse Waterston is Presidential Scholar and Professor Emerita, City University of New York, John Jay College of Criminal Justice and author or editor of seven books including Light in Dark Times: The Human Search for Meaning illustrated by Charlotte Corden. A Fellow of the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies in the Programmes in Transnational Processes, Structural Violence, and Inequality (2020-present), she served as President of the American Anthropological Association (2015-17). Waterston is editor of the Berghahn series, Intimate Ethnography and author of the award-winning My Father’s Wars: Migration, Memory and the Violence of a Century (10th anniversary edition forthcoming 2024).
Facilitators
Jennifer Ahern is a multi-disciplinary artist and environmental anthropologist. Currently pursuing a PhD with a Scholarship from the Environmental Research Institute as part of the University of Plymouth and UCC Doctoral Training Program. Focusing on sustainability framings for transformative change; her current research centres around systems thinking, art and the environment through community-based conservation in rural and urban Irish contexts.
Priyanka Borpujari is a Phan independent journalist, having reported on issues of human rights and justice from across Japan, Argentina, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Indonesia, El Salvador, and India. Her work has appeared in the British Medical Journal, Columbia Journalism Review, The Guardian, National Geographic, BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, TRT World, and several others. She has won numerous fellowships; she was a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at Nazareth College in Rochester, NY, where she taught media and human rights. Between 2018 and 2019, she has walked 1,200 kms across north and northeast India with two-time Pulitzer-winning journalist Paul Salopek, on his 33,000-km Out of Eden Walk, that traces the path of human migration. Borpujari is currently researching the intersection of gender, gerontology and social media within SALIS at Dublin City University. Her journalism can be found at https://priyankaborpujari.com/
Charlie Finucane is a 2nd year PhD student in anthropology at Queen’s University Belfast, working on the GroundsWell project, with the centre for public health, and a member of the Centre for Sustainability, Equality and Climate Action (SECA) at Queen’s. His research focuses on the use of public space, and environmental issues and how they can be used in conflict transformation projects in East Belfast. Charlie’s other areas of interest include green growth policies, the Irish diaspora and the use of urban green and blue spaces.
Brianna Griesinger is a PhD researcher in anthropology at Queen’s University Belfast, with a background in conflict transformation and social justice. Her research focuses on narrative and performance storytelling employed by feminists and activists pursuing reproductive justice in Peru. Her work considers transformative approaches to achieving reproductive justice through feminist identity development and community formation amidst a wide array of storytelling practices including testimony, informational resources, protest, as well as creative expression and performance.
Morgan Mattingly is a Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie early-stage researcher from Queen's University Belfast (QUB). Her current work explores the education experiences and resources of refugees and asylum seekers (RAS) to find ways to address education gaps and the digital divide by working with 16+ RAS to design solutions. An interdisciplinary researcher bridging Anthropology and Education, Morgan also has an academic background in communications, English literature and conflict transformation & social justice. Other interests include ESL, e-learning, inclusion, equity, trauma-informed practices, anthropology of design, the Capabilities Approach, UDL, education policy and the impact of education on civic participation and integration.
Molly McGrath is a PhD candidate at University of Cologne on a DFG funded project examining new material transitions in upland rural Laos. She also works in academic web design and moderation for various projects in Ireland and Germany. She has previously worked as a research assistant in the CyberSocial Research Lab and was Administrator for the Atlantic Anthropological for the 2023 edition. Her previous fieldwork concentrated on South America focusing on the coca plant with time spent particularly in Bolivia and Peru.
Lucy McSweeney is a PhD candidate with a scholarship at Trinity College Dublin on the project Digitising Biodiversity: Landscape – Animal – Digital – Human Translations, funded by the E3 Kinsella Challenge- Based Multidisciplinary Project Awards. Her research explores the different forms of human/non-human communication in specific locations and the nature of the translation paradigms underlying these practices. Lucy’s research is guided by posthumanism and uses translation theories alongside ethnographic methods.
Maria Bach Nielsen is Senior Project Manager and Industrial Ph.D. Fellow at the deep tech startup Cerebriu, with an affiliation to Aalborg University Copenhagen's Department of Sustainability and Planning, within the Techno-Anthropology and Participation (TAPAR) research group. With almost a half-decade of experience within the startup industry her research on the ETAARC project (Establishing Trust and Adoption of AI in Radiology Clinics: A Techno-Anthropological Approach Across Multiple Sites), endeavours to establish a valid methodology for fostering trust and successful adoption of AI-based decision support software in radiology. Her research is funded by the Innovation Fund Denmark and grounded in multi-site ethnography across various radiology clinics internationally, examining the integration of Cerebriu's AI product Apollo before and during its implementation. This project aims to contribute to the wider discourse on the ethical, social, and technological dimensions of integrating AI into healthcare practices
Gordon Ogutu is a PhD candidate at DCU School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies (SALIS). His research is focussed on refugee integration and social cohesion in protracted refugee camps, specifically the Kakuma refugee camps in Kenya. He has worked with NGOs supporting and advocating for refugee rights in Budapest, Dublin and Kenya.
Sara O'Rourke is a PhD researcher in The Department of Anthropology at Maynooth University. Her research looks at feminist iconography and affect in visual art and performance in Ireland, with a focus on the witch as an archetype. Her MA in anthropology was on memory and melancholy in the poetry of John Wieners.
Sharonne Specker is a PhD Candidate in Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews. Her research focuses on place and identity in contemporary learning contexts of Swiss folk music. She completed her BA and MA in Anthropology at the University of Victoria, Canada, and previously trained as a classical singer and voice instructor. Her research interests include the anthropology of place and landscape, learning practices, sound and sensory ethnography, identity and citizenship, collective memory and tradition, and creative research methodologies.
Peter Walsh is a research assistant and coordinator for the CyberSocial Research Lab at UCC. He combines clinical practice as a working psychotherapist with research interests in the overlapping areas of mental health, emotion and technology. He is the recipient of a fellowship grant from Université libre de Bruxelles to begin doctoral research on Mental Health in the context of the Metaverse.
Atlantic Anthropological
Antraipeolaíochta Atlantach
Directors: Dr. James Cuffe (UCC) & Dr. Fiona Murphy (DCU)
Administrators: Morgan Mattingly (QUB) & Peter Walsh (UCC)
Sacred Heart University, 19th, 20th & 21st April 2024
Dingle Campus, Daingean Uí Chúis, Co. Kerry, Ireland
Our Atlantic Anthropological workshop offers a multi-modal exploration of anthropology in its broadest sense. Set in the beautiful environs of the Dingle peninsula, participants will engage in contemporary theory and method with research-active scholars. The workshop is open to postgraduate students from anthropology and cognate disciplines. For 2024, our core faculty come from Sacred Heart University, University College Cork, Dublin City University, Queen’s University Belfast, with 12 more institutions contributing from North America and Europe.
Mode: 5 x plenary (10 hrs); 15 x masterclasses (17 hrs);
9 x reading groups (9 hrs), 1 x field trip (2 hrs)
Assessment: 1 x written assessment – optional, if credit needed via University College Cork, ECTS available, advise at registration.
Faculty: Tom Boland UCC , Tom Børsen AAU, Dominic Bryan QUB, Evi Chatzipanagiotidou QUB, Paul Clogher SETU, Dáithí de Mórdha SHU, Keith Egan IS, Ana Ivasuic EASA, Nasrin Khandoker UCC, Maria Loftus DCU, Billy Mag Fhloinn SHU, Iris Maher Mon, Nada Ní Churrín MU, Tríona Ní Shíocháin MU, Séamus Barra Ó Súilleabháin UCC, Kevin Power SHU, Gordon Ramsey QUB, Jolynna Sinanan UoM, Paul Stoller WCU, Rosalie Stolz UzK, Martin Toal DCU, Alisse Waterston CUNY
We look forward to welcoming you - go n-éirí an bóthar leat
This workshop is made possible thanks to the following generous sponsors:
Dingle Campus Office at Sacred Heart University
The CyberSocial Research Lab & School of Society Politics and Ethics at University College Cork
The School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at Queen's University Belfast
School of Applied Languages and Intercultural Studies, Dublin City University
The Irish Research Council
Atlantic Anthropological
Antraipeolaíochta Atlantach
Directors’ Welcome
In 2022, we inaugurated the Atlantic Anthropological workshop with the vision of moving beyond the limitations and confines of academia by fostering interdisciplinary connections and engaging with our peers both locally and globally through a student-centric event. The inaugural event's resounding success set a precedent, compelling us to continue with conviction and passion. Over the course of three years, the event has evolved, driven by an inherent energy, commitment and ethos.
Atlantic Anthropological workshop embodies a multifaceted, non-hierarchical, cross-disciplinary approach to intellectual exploration, mentorship and learning. It merges the rigour of a workshop and research-led teaching with the inclusivity and focus on learners typical of a conference. Yet, it distinguishes itself through creating classroom spaces that make knowledge tangible, experienced through movement, sound, creativity and engaging discussions. Our workshop fosters a sense of community and solidarity – emphasizing the importance of shared experiences and mutual support in navigating the complex terrain of our field, far beyond the conventional confines of textbooks and academic tropes.
We invite you to immerse yourself in this unique experience, to share your insights with others, and to return in future years, enriched and ready to contribute further. Your ongoing engagement is crucial and deeply valued, for this endeavour thrives on the collective goodwill and active participation of our growing community.
Warmly,
Fiona & James,
April 2024
Schedule
Arrival
09:00 – 13:00
Please arrive Friday morning between 9:00 and 13:00,
For MA Students staying in the Marina Cottages please let our organiser Peter Walsh know your estimated arrival time so that he can greet you and give you keys for the cottages.
The cottages are a 15 minute walk to the campus so please factor this into your timing for attending each day.
We kick off on Friday at 14:00.
Friday, 19th
14:00 MA Student Gathering on Campus at An Díseart - Morgan Mattingly (Top)
15:00 Break
15:30 Welcome to Atlantic Anthropological - Orientation –
James Cuffe & Fiona Murphy (Fresco)
16:00 Opening lecture: Ritual & Ceremony
P1: Old Rituals and New Needs Billy Mag Fhloinn (Fresco)
18:00 Close of Day 1
Please make your own social arrangements this evening.
Saturday 20th
09:00 Masterclasses A
A1: Bringing together the disparate - Maria Loftus and Fiona Murphy (Fresco)
A2: “Ireland’s Upanishads” - Kevin Power (Top)
A3: Body and Intuition - Keith Egan (POF)
10:15 Break
10:45 Masterclasses B
B1: CyberSocial Transformations in a Small Irish City - James Cuffe (Fresco)
B2: Ethnography, Public Anthropology and Research Impact - Dominic Bryan (Top)
B3: An Ethnographic Study of Homeless Support Workers - Martin Toal (POF)
12:00 Grab a bite
12:15 CyberSocial Huddle – James Cuffe – Benner’s Hotel (Invitees Only)
12:30 Directed Small Session A: DSS-1 / DSS-2 / DSS-3 / DSS-4 / DSS-5 / DSS-6
14:00 Keynote lecture
P2: Writing To Be Read - Alisse Waterston (Fresco)
15:30 Break
16:00 Ethnographic Excursion by bus with Dáithí de Mórdha
20:00 Performance Seminar and Salon (Courthouse Pub)
P3: Performance Seminar and Salon - Tríona Ní Síocháin, Séamus Barra Ó Súilleabháin & Nada Ní Chuirrín
Please make your own dinner arrangements this evening. There will be time between the return of the ethnographic excursion to grab a bite whether eating out or cooking in the cottages. We then reconvene in the Courthouse pub from 19:30 for a celebration of Irish culture old and new under the expert guidance of Tríona, Séamus and Nada. Come in good time to secure a good seat as this event will be open to the public so we aim to have our group in first and seated before we start.
Sunday 21st
09:00 Directed Small Sessions B: DSS-7 / DSS-8 / DSS-9 / DSS-10 / DSS-11 / DSS-12
10:00 Break
10.30 Masterclasses C
C1: Techno-Crisis, Techno-Activism & Technology Assessment - Tom Børsen (POF)
C2: Affectively Aware Ethnography with Nasrin Khandoker (Top)
C3: Intersectional Approaches to Social Class & Sectarian Identity - Gordon Ramsey (Fresco)
11:45 Break
12:15 Masterclasses D
D1: Navigating Uncertainty - Iris Maher (POF)
D2: Ethnographies of (In)security - Ana Ivasiuc (Fresco)
D3: The Anthropology of Time - Evi Chatzipanagiotidou (Top)
13:30 Lunch
14:00 Keynote Lecture
P3: Beyond the Mountain, More Mountains - Jolynna Sinanan (Fresco)
15:30 Break
15:45 Masterclasses E
E1: Ethnographic Writing Master Class with Paul Stoller (Fresco)
E2: ‘Don’t criticise what you can’t understand’? with Tom Boland (POF)
E3: Feuerbach’s Cinema with Paul Clogher (Top)
18:00 Parting Meal – James Long’s
Join us in James Long’s for a convivial meal provided by AA
20:00 Closing Ceremony with Billy Mag Fhloinn
P4: Music, Magic and Gratitude in McCarthy’s Pub
Plenary Sessions
P1: Old Rituals and New Needs
Billy Mag Fhlionn
This presentation explores the role of ritual and ceremony in contemporary culture, specifically focusing on Pagan Rave. This is an ongoing, performance-based project which aims to reimagine and repurpose the folk traditions and calendar customs of Ireland. It will examine the various sources of inspiration for the project, and the interface between art, academia, ceremony, tradition, and community.
Keynote 1
P2: Writing To Be Read:
Design, Discipline, Practices, and Experiments in Communicating Anthropological Knowledge
Alisse Waterston
In “Writing To Be Read,” Alisse Waterston discusses aspects of writing anthropology designed to venture beyond the confines of the ivory tower to engage with diverse audiences. She reflects upon the art and the craft, the whys and wherefores, the conceptions and creations, and the uses of new tools and technologies as scholars anticipate putting knowledge to public use in the interest of a more just world. Invoking her writing experiments with intimate ethnography and the graphic format, Waterston considers matters of commitment, motivation, inspiration, worries, writing habits, narrative strategy, and institutional constraints as anthropologists look to get people to read what they write. Underneath these efforts are various questions for discussion that may include: What is gained and what is lost in crafting works designed to stimulate, disturb and/or inspire?; What personal decisions and institutional principles and expectations are required to take a creative work of public anthropology from its initial conception to its fruition, and beyond that to its reception by readers in and outside of the academy.
Saturday Evening Salon
P3: Performance Seminar and Salon:
‘Embodied Orality, Gender, and Vernacular Creative Practices’
Nada Ní Chuirrín, Tríona Ní Shíocháin & Séamus Barra Ó Súilleabháin
This seminar and salon will intertwine creative practice performances with short talks and discussion on gender and vernacular arts practice including dance, music, song, narrative, oral poetry and associated performative practices in the Irish tradition. Three interweaving talks and accompanying performances will argue for the profound importance of what might be termed ‘embodied orality’, an aesthetic system and cultural practice fundamental to the generation of vernacular technique and style and systems of conceptual thought within the Irish tradition. Nada Ní Chuirrín will explore the embodied knowledges of sean-nós dance from the Connemara region, including the symbiosis between music and dancing. This will also include a theorisation of the performativity of gender through dance and a discussion of standardization of dance practices and the disciplining of the dancing body.
Tríona Ní Shíocháin will discuss the oral traditional creative practices of women song poets and women singers that existed independent of the written word. Focusing in particular on the re-compositional and re-creative practices of song, the representation of women’s voices and the use of creative practice as a disruptive space in which patriarchal norms can be contested will be discussed. This will then lead to Séamus Barra Ó Súilleabháin’s discussion of the work of Méiní, the mid-wife of the Blasket Islands, and her representation through the work of the poet, Maidhc File, a son of the renowned storyteller, Peig Sayers. Here the representation of women’s voices through the intricate re-creative practices of orality will be explored, and the inherent power of oral poetic performance discussed.
Talk and discussion will be kept free-flowing and informal, inviting dialogue with attendees, and will be interspersed with performances from these three scholar-performers, a celebration of the disruptive power of underground un(der)documented embodied knowledges of orality.
Keynote 2
P4: Beyond the mountain, more mountains:
A reflection on motivation for anthropology today
Jolynna Sinanan
What motivates an emerging generation of anthropologically trained professionals in uncertain times? The contemporary moment is defined by ecological and geopolitical crises that reshape orientations towards precarious futures. Anthropologists embarking on their careers in the 2020s face a different landscape to previous generations whose legacies they have inherited, continue and challenge. In this keynote address, Jolynna Sinanan will argue that emerging and early-career anthropologists can (and must) remain motivated amidst the rampant uncertainty of the unfolding of the 21st century. She will draw on key ways of thinking in the anthropology of futures and ethics and her continuing research in the Solukhumbu (Everest) region in Nepal to demonstrate the potentials of the sensibilities and practicalities of gaining anthropological knowledge to collaborate towards realising individual and collective aspirations.
Closing Rites
To celebrate the end of another Atlantic Anthropological we gather for evening meal at 18:00 sharp in James Long’s Restaurant followed by quick reassembly for music and more celebrations in McCarthys Pub. Please arrive from 17:45.
P5: Music, Magic and Gratitude in McCarthy’s Pub
Billy Mag Fhloinn
In what is now an annually cherished musical farewell we convene in the back room of McCarthy’s pub. No more description is offered, this is to be heard and felt.
Masterclasses
** Choose one from Group A, B, C, D, & E **
A1: Bringing together the disparate:
leveraging creativity in the codesign of an anti-racism graphic novel
Maria Loftus and Fiona Murphy
This paper seeks to share the processes involved in the co-design of a graphic novel, created by Ballymun Youthreach students, International Protection Applicants (IPAs) and student trainee teachers. It is the fruit of six workshops, facilitated by Fighting Words and other creativity activists with the aim of looking at how anti-racist educational and creative resources can be co-created, leveraged and scaled to build capacity in intercultural competencies and social inclusion. The bringing together of the three cohorts as co-creators, changemakers and adult allies requires lateral thinking, improvised recalibration and inclusive non-hierarchical pedagogy. An oft ignored liminal space comes to the fore on the pages of the graphic novel. A shared place of belonging, projected or real, takes shape. By examining the creative processes and resultant graphic novel, a model for the dissolution of essentialism and cultural nationalism will be disseminated. Attendees will be encouraged to collaboratively take part in the creation of a micro-graphic novel, illustrating how this template can be used to leverage intercultural dialogue.
A2 “Ireland’s Upanishads”: The Native Wisdom of John Moriarty’s Six Stories
Kevin Power
In Crossing the Kedron Irish writer and philosopher John Moriarty dives into the lived experience of rural Ireland and resurfaces with stories not of poverty and hardship but of wisdom, spiritual and ecological interconnection, and unique reflections on the human condition. This masterclass will demonstrate the intellectual value of reflecting on rural Irish heritage; the stories and lessons encoded within, the comparison with other cultural contexts, and the insights which can be gained from ‘simple’, non-academic storytelling. Moriarty’s vast knowledge of world religions and spiritual traditions created a grounding for the expression of universal concerns through local storytelling. In the absence of a traditional sacred text, Moriarty presents the Six Stories as “Ireland’s Upanishads”, identifying rural Irish life as a context for exploring the search for meaning that is common to all human societies.
A3 Body and Intuition
Keith Egan
Meanings, Tim Ingold reminds us, are often made in motion. In contrast to the static, cognitive Cartesian ego, it is more fruitful to consider our being, in terms of dynamic flows of intuition in the world and on the move. Thus, we can learn ourselves more truly at the nexus between ability and transcendence. Moreover, having such insights granted us through more a fertile starting point as “I cannot, therefore I am” humbles us, in the sense of grounding us in ourselves. When we practice this penumbral exploration with others, then, the benefits are put to work in making and remaking self, culture and world. This workshop will explore the possibilities of edge-work through movement, specifically forms of preparation to practise Tai Chi with others, where we will plumb the potential for understanding how ‘being’ can be built out of ‘being present’, to self, others and world, by exploring the limits of our bodies and our attention. Such insights are of benefit to us as human beings who are becoming and who make meanings on the move. They also, however, hold some implications for how we practise ethnographic engagement, where the anxieties of our presence and attention can be deployed in grounding our practice in a deeper method.
B1: CyberSocial Transformations in a Small Irish City
James Cuffe
This lecture will describe and present initial reflections from ongoing research by the CyberSocial Research Lab at UCC, funded by the Irish Research Council. This research concerns the digital transitions in urban living, examining how new cyber and digital technologies are (or not) integrated into everyday life. Economic drivers, through chasing efficiency, extraction of value, rationalisation of workflows, and automation of mundane tasks, present a certain vision for our social futures. All such themes carry clear potential benefits but also potential risks that receive poor attention until these risks are realised once new processes are socially and politically embedded. Once social risks are embedded, they are hard to mitigate. Such a scenario is described by Collingridge’s methodological quandary in the Dilemma of Control. How might we circumvent this double-bind? How can we mitigate against future unknown social injustices as yet another technological paradigm unfolds? This lecture hypothesizes that - drawing upon Simondon and Hui – by reimaging our technosocial assemblages as dynamic patterns we can ‘liberate’ technology from its slavery to humanity.
B2: Ethnography, Public Anthropology and Research Impact
Dominic Bryan
There is an increasing demand for research to have ‘impact’ outside the confines of academia. This class will explore (1) the utility of ethnography in creating impactful research; (2) the methods that offer an engaged research agenda; (3) the issues of conducting a public anthropology. Drawing on 30 years of experience of working on a peace process in Northern Ireland I will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of anthropological approaches to policy, with reference to debates on public space around parades, flags and bonfires. Included in the topics will be: (1) working with the state; (2) working with local groups; (3) utilising human rights approaches; and (4) dealing with the strange stare you get form people if you tell them, you are an anthropologist.
B3:
An ethnographic study of homeless support workers in a not-for-profit homeless organisation in the Republic of Ireland: Challenges, Pitfalls and Findings.
Martin Toal
This presentation will describe a focused ethnographic study of homeless support workers in Focus Ireland, a not-for-profit homeless organisation in the Republic of Ireland, and the challenges they face in supporting culturally diverse clients. Firstly, I will describe the practical challenges of setting up and conducting an ethnographic study. In particular, the discussion centres on the use of participant observations, some of which took place in a small space where note taking proved impossible. I will be discussing a number of solutions to this challenge and their effectiveness. The second part of the presentation involves a discussion of the findings generated from the participant observations and a number of group interviews of Focus Ireland staff in the Republic of Ireland. Themes include: the challenges faced by support workers during home visits, challenges encountered by support workers in attempting to combat racist behaviour or discrimination by various actors such as neighbours or private landlords; and the need to develop good language competence, both verbal and non-verbal on the part of not-for profit homeless support workers who support culturally diverse clientele.
C1:
Techno-Crisis, Techno-Activism and Technology Assessment in Techno-Anthropology
Tom Børsen
In this presentation I will introduce how we enact Techno-Anthropology at Aalborg University as a study program and as a research area. The Techno-Anthropological triangle and the concept of Techno-Crisis are used to explain how we understand technology as dialectical socio-technical phenomenon, enframed by artifact, users, and experts. The concept of Techno-Activism is used to unfold participatory approaches to Techno-Anthropology with a focus on empowerment and inclusion. Technology Assessment is used to explore how normative positions and eclectic approaches can inform Techno-Anthropology. Two techno-anthropological projects, supported by the Innovation Fund Denmark, will exemplify some of my points. One project deals with an AI decision support tools in radiology clinics, the other project addresses P2X production and storing facilities at the Port of Rønne. I am curious to learn how you approach technologies in your projects. Thus, after my presentation we will discuss how to engage with technologies in research.
C2: Affectively Aware Ethnography:
Embodied Emotion and ‘Becoming the woman’ of Bhawaiya folk songs of Bengal.
Nasrin Khandoker
My ethnographic research investigating the deviant and defiant desires of women from a subjective position as expressed through the Bangla folk song genre of Bhawaiya, was inseparable from my own subjective emotion and affect. As a Bangladeshi woman, the dynamic of my subjectivity and belonging-ness was rooted in the history of the Bhawaiya areas and the emotions that it carries. In my ethnography, I situate myself in the affective relation with the female subjects of the songs as well as with the Bhawaiya practitioners of both genders to understand the subjectivity of 'becoming the woman of Bhawaiya' through experiencing the performances. By participating in the day-to-day rehearsals and less formal performances of the Bhawaiya singers, I as a researcher became an inseparable part of the emotional atmosphere that they create. The emotions of the women of the songs are evoked by the performers, moved through the music, connecting the bodies of the participants and creating temporal embodied subjectivities. Hence, to analyse the 'becoming the woman' subject of Bhawaiya by the performers, my subjective emotion and affect was not only limited to the ethical perspective of 'reflexivity' of the ethnography but became an integral part of the ethnographic knowledge production. In this paper, I will show that my subjective participation is not an obstacle to the ethnographic knowledge production, but rather contributes to the methodological and epistemological knowledge in anthropology. The intersubjective connection between myself and the field composed of the people, place and its materiality contributes to affectively aware scholarship of anthropology.
C3: Intersectional Approaches to Social Class and Sectarian Identity:
Lessons from Northern Ireland
Gordan Ramsey
Sectarianism in Northern Ireland has no defenders. Those from every part of the political spectrum condemn it and deny being sectarian, whilst alleging that their opponents are. Nevertheless, the sectarian divide structures virtually all political, cultural and social life in the province. Sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland has challenged both liberal and Marxist analyses, resulting in Northern Ireland being labelled an anachronistic “place apart”, where upon arrival, visitors should turn their watches back to 1690. A particular problem for Marxian theorists has been that sectarian allegiances are most enthusiastically embraced and fiercely defended by working-class groups, which, according to orthodox Marxist theory, are most disadvantaged by them. In this discussion, I first define sectarianism and considers its relationship to other forms of discrimination, particularly racism. I then consider the relationship between social class and sectarian solidarity with particular attention to working-class loyalism. I go on to apply the insights developed in Ulster to analogous relations between class and sectarian identities in contexts outside Northern Ireland, suggesting that the durability of sectarian solidarity can be explained by its effectiveness as a form of class politics.
D1: Navigating Uncertainty:
Everyday Transport with Families of Children with Disability in Australia
Iris Maher
Imagine you cannot leave your home. Why? Because of a car seat. This is the reality for children with disability and their families. In Australia, transport for children with disability is managed by various governmental and non-governmental agencies, many of which are under no obligation to communicate with one another. As a result, the process by which parents of children with disability organise their child’s daily transport is more difficult than it should be, especially when it comes to child car seats. In this session we will follow one family's journey in the search to find, fund, and legally use a car seat.
D2: Ethnographies of (In)security: Challenging Ethnography
Ana Ivasiuc
In this master class, I will rely on fieldwork storytelling from my ethnography of formal and informal policing of the Roma in the peripheries of Rome. I will discuss two ethnographic issues: first, the challenges of studying (in)security ethnographically, in our security-saturated world; and second, how such ethnographies in difficult and conflict-ridden settings challenge our ethnographic textbook expectations on the coherence and smoothness of fieldwork itself. I will recount stories from my encounters and research with a far-right group and a special police unit that illustrate the various meanings of “challenging ethnography”. If ethnography is “the art of the possible”, as Ulf Hannerz put it, how can one patch together ethnography in challenging contexts?
D3: The Anthropology of Time
Evi Chatzipanagiotidou
Do we all experience time in the same way? Is there one time or different temporalities across cultures and societies? How does time relate to space? In this session, we will discuss critical anthropological approaches to time and temporality. We will deal with time as a social experience and political tool that is embedded in and reproduces power dynamics and inequalities. We will also examine why anthropologists have privileged the past at the expense of the future in their analysis of temporal practices and experiences. By drawing on my own ethnographic engagement with time in the contexts of migration, displacement and diasporas, I will encourage you to think about how anthropological approaches to time can be utilised in your own work and critical analyses.
E1: Ethnographic Writing Master Class: Writing Space and Place
Paul Stoller
The aim of this master class is to introduce anthropology students to the fundamental features and essential practices of ethnography writing in the contemporary world. During the workshop students will learn how to evoke space and place— essential elements in ethnographic representation. Put another way, the instructor will ask students to write culture and learn some of the "tricks of the trade.” How do you describe a river, a house, a pathway, a tree? What memories are embedded in spaces? What "wisdom sits in places?" As a writing exercise, the master class students will then describe a space/place that is, in one way or another, important to them. In the spirit of collaboration that is so intrinsic to writing communities, the students will then present for constructive commentary their evocations space/place. In this way future writers of ethnography can develop the skills that enable the they to produce ethnographic texts that can remain "open to the world."
E2: ‘Don’t criticise what you can’t understand’?:
The problem of researching the culture wars.
Tom Boland
Contemporary (modern, western) culture wars are so all-encompassing that there are no sidelines to remain on, nor any ‘fence’ left in the middle. Everything is politicised, even and especially any attempt to resist or remain outside the fray. Every position has its opposite, every movement has a backlash and everyone is criticised. Yet, by taking an anthropological focus on understanding rather than criticising others, it is possible to research this all-encompassing and all-transforming cultural phenomenon. Using digital ethnography and discourse analysis, it is possible to clarify the meanings, values and stakes of seemingly interminable, cacophonous disputes.
E3: Feuerbach’s Cinema: Theology and (as) Anthropology in Three Films
Paul Clogher
From the publication of Ludwig Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity (1841) and perhaps long before, there has been a rich history of exchange between theology and anthropology. In this session, we consider aspects of this relationship through the prism of three films: Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema (1968); Nicholas Roeg’s The Man who Fell to Earth (1976); and Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). Each explores aspects of how culture, lifeworld, spirituality, and faith intersect in and through diverse cultural and historical worlds. Cinema is a cultural artefact that visualizes meaning and mirrors the religious/social situation of its time, but it is equally a symbolic and poetic medium that not only mirrors but mediates and perhaps reveals an otherness. This session explores these meeting points as ways of understanding Feuerbach’s often quoted but sometimes misunderstood slogan: ‘theology is anthropology.’
Field Excursion
**As Irish weather on the wild Atlantic coast can be unpredictable,
bring waterproofs and sun protection.**
Ethnographic Excursion
People & Place on the Dingle Peninsula
Dáithí de Mórdha
This excursion will bring students on a guided tour of the environs around Dingle. Dáithí will discuss the impact of the landscape on its people and of the people on the landscape.
Directed Small Sessions
**Choose one from group A and one from group B**
A-DSS-1. Translating the More-Than-Human, Lucy McSweeney
This session will discuss more sustainable and ethical ways of engaging and communicating with the contemporary more-than-human world in the Anthropocene through the lens of posthumanism, translation and eco-translation.
Barcz, A., & Cronin, M. (2023). Eco-Translation and Interspecies Communication in the Anthropocene. In S. E. Wilmer & A. Zukauskaite (Eds.), Life in the Posthuman Condition: Critical Responses to the Anthropocene (pp. 130-148). Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press. (NO link, will send pdf to those in the group)
Di Giminiani, P., & Haines, S. (2020). Introduction: Translating Environments. Ethnos, 85(1), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2018.1542409
A-DSS-2: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words, Jennifer Ahern
Anthropology has a long history of using visual methods in ethnographic research. Using the medium of collage, this practical workshop will explore the power and potential of the image as a visual ethnographic method. “Collage often brings disparate elements together and can be a powerful way of jarring people into thinking and seeing differently, performing cultural critique, producing connections that would otherwise remain out of reach, inferring new associations or refining or enhancing meanings” (Levy 2015:235). Participants will have a fun introduction to the potential of collage as a creative methodology and method through the art of making, connection and discussion. We will explore both the potentials of collage as data and as an ethnographic method and how these can be applied in different research contexts. No previous creative experience required and all materials will be provided.
Leavy, Patricia. 2015. ‘The Visual Arts’, chap in Method Meets Art: Arts-Based Research Practice. p224-247 Second ed. New York; London : The Guilford Press.
A-DSS-3: Participatory Action Research (PAR) and ‘deep hanging out’: Ways of Knowing & Community Action, Morgan Mattingly
PAR, as a methodology, is goal oriented. It requires working together with a community to examine a problem with goal of addressing it for the better through ‘knowledge’ co-produced with a community. Rooted in Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” knowledge is produced in solidarity with action. However, when utilising such methodology there are many challenges which must be considered. This reading group will creatively consider constraints of PAR research: time, trust, control, credibility, reciprocity, etc.
Tritz, J. (2014) ‘Participatory Research : A Tool for Extension Educators’, The Journal of Extension, 52(4), pp. 1–3.
Dedding, C. and Goedhart, N. S. (2021) ‘Exploring the boundaries of “ good ” Participatory Action Research in times of increasing popularity : dealing with constraints in local policy for digital inclusion’, Educational Action Research, 29(1), pp. 20–36.
A-DSS-4: God’s Eye: Perspectival Shifts in the Pursuit of Meaning, Kevin Power
If a crisis of meaning is one of the ailments of contemporary life, then what might a substantial shift in perspective teach us about our individual and collective motivations for how we live? This session constitutes an imaginative reorientation from multiple perspectives: the mass extinctions of Earth’s past which facilitated the development of human life, what it might be like to ‘be’ a non-conscious entity like a virus, and the notion of cosmological extinction in the form of the heat-death of the universe. By momentarily inhabiting these perspectives, how might we recontextualise our priorities as a species once we return to the here-and-now of the human experience?
No Readings
A-DSS-5: Why are older people using smartphones? Priyanka Borpujari
“Digital technologies are alien to older people.” “Older people use digital technology only for medical emergencies.” “Older people don’t have fun.” How true are each of these statements? Do we recognize our grandparents in any of these statements? In this reading group—based on the facilitator’s ongoing research in the intersection of genders, ageing and social media—we will discuss the different ways in which certain populations are excluded or typecast in specific research agendas.
“Why It is Easier to Slay a Dragon Than to Kill a Myth About Older People’s Smartphone Use” https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05581-2_16
“Communication Predicaments of Aging: Patronizing Behavior towards Older Adults” https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X95141008
Germaine Greer says feminism is ageist and the aged care sector is under attack https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/mar/08/germaine-greer-feminism-ageist-aged-care-sector-under-attack-pensions-australia
A-DSS-6: There’s no place like home, Molly McGrath
In this reading group, we will explore our relationships with and conceptualisations of home. What feelings, imagery, or senses are evoked when imagining one’s homeplace? What role do material aspects play in this construction? The design choices that transform the structures in which we dwell from house to home will be discussed and compared to definitions of the home beyond its physical structure. Considering what it means for one to feel “at home”, or why one whose home is a tent might be considered “homeless,” we will contemplate classifications of the home across cultures, places, spaces, time, feelings, and practices.
de Botton, A., 2007. The Significance of Architecture. In: The Architecture of Happiness. CA: Penguin Books.
Douglas, M., 1991. The Idea of a Home: A Kind of Space. Social Research, 58(1), pp. 287-301.
B-DSS-7: The Gesture in Everyday Life: Poetics, Politics, Affect. Sara O’Rourke
In The Minor Gesture, Erin Manning explores alternative ways of moving and being moved by the world, in our experiencing of the world(s). By examining how small gestures can play a role in political action and agency she develops a theory that includes the role of the minor gesture in social change with a focus on autistic perception. If, as she contends, ‘in its movement, the minor gesture creates sites of dissonance, staging disturbances that open experience to new modes of expression’ (Manning 2016, 2) how might we as anthropologists consider the affect of embodied research, and its potential disturbances. We will read together and explore gestures in everyday life.
Manning, Erin. The Minor Gesture. Duke University Press, 2016. Introduction & Chapter 3: ‘Weather Patterns, or How Minor Gestures Entertain the Environment’
B-DSS-8: Storytelling as Practice and with Purpose, Brianna Griesinger
This reading group considers the role of storytelling in modern political contexts, focussing on the present-day global feminist movement. We will ask: How do stories mobilise? How can stories enact justice? Participants will discuss the vast range of storytelling mediums used by activists globally and how those practices can impact social justice goals differently. From ‘artivism’ and performance street art to testimony we will reflect on storytelling as integral to feminist pedagogy.
Serafini, P., (2020) A rapist in your path: Transnational feminist protest and why (and how) performance matters, European Journal of Cultural Studies, 23(2), pp. 290-295,
Wånggren, L., (2016) Our stories matter: storytelling and social justice in the Hollaback! Movement, Gender and Education, 28(3), pp. 401-415,
B-DSS-9: Displacement Research and Gatekeeping, Gordon Ogutu
One of the challenges of conducting research in marginalised communities like refugees is overcoming the gatekeepers who exist within the refugee and host communities and the governing institutions as well. While gatekeepers can play a significant role in research by preventing exploitative research, speeding up recruitment of participants, acting as cultural mediators and ensuring the researcher’s legitimacy within the community (de Laine, 2000; McAreavey and Das, 2013), they can also impede accessing minority or marginalised participants. However, gatekeepers can negatively impact the research by imposing their own realities and providing the same participants approved only by themselves. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Kakuma refugee camps and Kalobeyei Integrated refugee Settlement in North-Western Kenya, this reading group will discuss the various levels involved in ethnographic research, the ethical considerations, and research strategies to overcome gatekeeping challenges before, during and after fieldwork.
de Laine, M. (2000) ‘Fieldwork, Participation and Practice: Ethics and Dilemmas in Qualitative Research’, pp. 1–240.
McAreavey, R. and Das, C. (2013) ‘A Delicate Balancing Act: Negotiating with Gatekeepers for Ethical Research When Researching Minority Communities’, International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 12(1), pp. 113–131.
B-DSS-10: The Seen and Unseen of Northern Ireland - Understanding Field Sites with an Anthropological Lens, Charlie Finucane
Northern Ireland has been a state surrounded by strife and division, with the infrastructure of Belfast designed around this pressing problem. This reading group intends to examine the less ‘obvious’ barriers of how spaces are constructed and used to lay claim to areas or make them ‘safer’. Examining architecture, nature, and infrastructure through an anthropological lens can help to better understand your field sites and why simple design choices can noticeably change the dynamic of an area.
Coyles,D. Hamber, B. & Grant, A. (2021) 'Hidden barriers and divisive architecture: The role of “everyday space” in conflict and peacebuilding in Belfast', Journal of Urban Affairs, (), pp. 1-24.
Lang, L. and Mell, I. (2020) 'I stick to this side of the park: Parks as shared space in contemporary Belfast', Nature and Space, 3(2), pp. 203-526.
B-DSS-11: Qualitative Insights and Assessment Models for AI, Maria Bach Nielsen
Through a techno-anthropological lens, we will explore the field of qualitative research within the adoption of AI-based decision support systems in clinical settings. Participants will engage in critical discussions on the benefits of rapid ethnography, assessment models, and the importance of including the broader socio-technical dynamics in the transition toward AI-enabled healthcare.
Kim, B., Romeijn, S., van Buchem, M., Mehrizi, M.H.R. and Grootjans, W., 2024. A holistic approach to implementing artificial intelligence in radiology. Insights into Imaging, 15(1), p.22.
Fasterholdt, I., Kjølhede, T., Naghavi-Behzad, M., Schmidt, T., Rautalammi, Q.T., Hildebrandt, M.G., Gerdes, A., Barkler, A., Kidholm, K., Rac, V.E. and Rasmussen, B.S., 2022. Model for ASsessing the value of Artificial Intelligence in medical imaging (MAS-AI). International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care, 38(1), p.e74.
B-DSS-12: Sound, sociality, & place, Sharonne Specker
Our identities and relationships to place and memory are shaped through various embodied channels, of which sound is one. How can we explore the connections between sound, place, and subject? How can attention to these sonic dimensions of social life broaden our ethnographic knowledge, and help us think about identity-making processes? This session will invite us to think through the complex dimensions of locality and experiences of place as they intersect with memory, sociality, citizenship, and selfhood. If you wish, bring a sound clip or piece of music that reminds you of a particular place.
Feld, S. 1996. “Waterfalls of Song: An Acoustemology of Place Resounding in Bosavi, Papua New Guinea.” In Senses of Place (eds.) S. Feld and K. H. Basso, 91-135. Seattle: School of American Research Press. [excerpt: read p. 91-98 - remainder is optional]
Sumartojo, S. 2017. “Making Sense of Everyday Nationhood: Traces in the Experiential World.” In Everyday Nationhood: Theorising Culture, Identity and Belonging After Banal Nationalism, (eds.) M. Skey and M. Antonsich, 197-214. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan
Atlantic Anthropological Team for 2024
Directors
Dr. James Cuffe is an anthropologist and IRC Laureate currently working on a 3 year ethnographic project on digital urban transitions at the CyberSocial Research Lab in University College Cork. His previous work includes ethnographic research in Shanghai on the effects of mediative technologies in social change published as a monograph with Routledge - China at a Threshold (2021). He is particularly motivated in rinsing out ideas from the philosophy of technology with ethnographic work. He is co-convenor of the European Digital Anthropology Network and was General Editor of the Irish Journal of Anthropology 2014-2019.
Dr. Fiona Murphy is an anthropologist based in SALIS in Dublin City University. As an anthropologist of displacement, she works with Stolen Generations in Australia and people seeking asylum and refuge in Ireland, the United Kingdom and Turkey. She has a particular passion for creative and public anthropologies and is always interested in experimenting with new forms and genres. She is co-author of Integration in Ireland: The everyday life of African migrants in Ireland (Manchester Uni Press: 2012).
Faculty
Dr. Tom Boland is Head of Department of Sociology and Criminology, UCC. His main research interests are in critique, culture unemployment and welfare. His work draws on multiple disciplines, from anthropology through to philosophy, and in particular, historical genealogies of the present - particularly the governmentality of welfare and the discourse of critique. Also, he is a cultural sociologist, with interests in literary theory and cultural studies. He is the co-director of the Economy + Society Summer School with Dr. Ray Griffin (WIT), and similarly the WUERC group.
Dr. Tom Børsen is an Associate Professor at Aalborg University, where he is a member of the research group in Techno-Anthropology and Participation (TAPAR). His research clusters around three aspects of Responsible Technological Innovation: Ethical technology assessment, robust technologies through action research, and teaching responsibility in STEM. He teaches many of these aspects at the BSc and MSc programs in Techno-Anthropology, which he co-founded in 2011.
Prof. Dominic Bryan is Professor of Anthropology at Queen’s University Belfast, known for his contributions to the field of conflict transformation and identity politics. He was Director of the Institute of Irish Studies (QUB) from 2002-2016; co-chair of the all-party Commission on Flags, Identity, Culture and Tradition (2016-2020); and is presently Chair of the Short Working Group Reviewing Processions in Scotland (2022-). Dominic’s research interests include political rituals, symbols, public space, commemoration and memory. He is presently working on a project exploring the persistence of paramilitarism in Northern Ireland and shared spaces in Belfast.
Dr. Evi Chatzipanagiotidou is an anthropologist at Queen's University Belfast. Her research interests focus on the study of migration and diasporas, conflict-induced displacement, time and temporality, and the politics of memory and loss. Evi has carried out field research in Cyprus, Greece, the United Kingdom and Turkey and has published widely on topics such as the relations between memory and history in Cyprus, the political role of the Cypriot diaspora in issues of rapprochement and reunification, youth migration and labour precarity in Southern Europe, and the politics of silence(s) and loss through Syrian refugee artworks.
Dr. Paul Clogher lectures in Theology and Religious Studies at South East Technological University, Waterford, where he is co-director of the Spirituality in Society and the Professions research group. His research interests focus on cultural theology and the relationship between theology and cinema.
Prof. Dáithí de Mórdha is an ethnologist and historian from Co. Kerry, Ireland. He attained a degree in History & Irish from NUI Galway in 2005, a master’s degree in Ethnology from University College Cork in 2012, and a PhD in Ethnology from UCC in 2019. He is currently adjunct instructor in History & Anthropology in SHU Campus Dingle. His areas of interest includes Folk Memory, Indigenous Knowledge and Verbal Artforms, Oral & Folk History, and Visual Anthropology. He is also interested in ideas and concepts of race, and in how to use folk memory and oral history to inform historical research and teaching. He is a former Director of the Great Blasket Heritage Centre in West Kerry, a Centre dedicated to the memory of the people of the Blasket Islands.
Dr. Keith Egan works on European pilgrimage itineraries such as the Camino de Santiago and Medjugorje, and his research interests include philosophical approaches to reading contemporary religious phenomena and practices in the wake of seemingly declining engagement with historically popular religious forms.
Dr. Ana Ivasiuc works on urban insecurity, formal and informal policing, security practices of the far-right in Europe, and the securitization of Roma groups. She carried out ethnographic research in the peripheries of Rome, where she observed the racial policing of the Roma, as well as grassroots practices of informal policing. Since 2020, she is a co-convener of the Anthropology of Security network. She is currently President of the European Association of Social Anthropologists.
Dr. Nasrin Khandoker is a Post-doc researcher in the CyberSocial project. She received her PhD in Anthropology from Maynooth University and has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Limerick and Galway University. Before coming to Ireland, she was an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at Jahangirnagar University. She received a Wenner-Gren Wadsworth fellowship from US and John and Pat Hume scholarship from Maynooth University for her PhD, awarded in 2021. She has written articles for academic and public readers about feminisms, gender and sexuality, and human rights. Her research interests are gender and sexuality, migration, emotion and affect, embodiment and post-colonial critiques.
Dr. Maria Loftus lectures in French language and literature in the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies (SALIS). Her research interests pertain to representations of alterity in Sub-Saharan Documentary Cinema, multimodality and Second Language Acquisition and more recently creative co-designs around the theme of displacement.
Prof. Billy Mag Fhloinn is a folklorist with Sacred Heart University. As well as lecturing and tutoring at university level, he also works with Irish television for RTÉ or TG4, but occasionally for international productions, including the BBC, PBS and the National Geographic Channel. He is an accomplished musician and occasionally works as a tour guide in the Dingle Peninsula. He has taught courses with Sacred Heart University in Dingle in Celtic Religion and Mythology as well as Irish Folklore and History since 2014. Billy’s scholarly interests include pre-Christian religious practices and beliefs, prehistoric archaeology, and folk practices of early modern Ireland. In 2016 he published a book entitled Blood Rite: The Feast of St. Martin in Ireland.
Dr. Iris Maher is a social anthropologist interested in how the design of objects and systems is experienced by its users. Her PhD research was based on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork investigating the design and use of car seats for children with disability in Australia. Her fieldwork examined the uncertainty parents experience when faced with the organisational and institutional barriers to funding and sanctioning the use of devices which are necessary for their everyday travel. Iris holds a PhD from the Emerging Technologies Lab at Monash University.
Nada Ní Chuirrín is a sean-nós dancer, Irish traditional musician and PhD candidate on the Modern-Irish (Artistic Research) programme at Maynooth University. She is currently lecturer in Modern Irish in the School of Celtic Studies in Maynooth. She was awarded a John and Pat Hume scholarship for her doctoral research entitled ‘Brí, Taibhléiriú agus Ceist na hInscne i dTraidisiún an Damhsa ar an Sean-nós i gConamara’/ ‘Gender, Performance and Meaning in the Sean-nós Dancing Tradition of Connemara’. In 2018, Nada won Corn TG4, the senior sean-nós dancing competition at Oireachtas na Samhna.
Prof. Tríona Ní Shíocháin is an interdisciplinary scholar of Music and Irish, and a whistle-player, singer, and set-dancer. She was appointed Professor of Modern Irish and Performing Arts at Maynooth University in 2021, where she is currently Head of the School of Celtic Studies, prior to which she was Head of the Department of Music and Lecturer in Irish Traditional Music at University College Cork. She is author of Bláth's Craobh na nÚdar: Amhráin Mháire Bhuí (2012) and Singing Ideas: Performance, Politics and Oral Poetry (2018; published 2021). She is deeply interested in embodied knowledges, oral composition, transmission and performance in the work of women poet-composers and singers, and in the alternative histories of thought embodied in vernacular arts practices.
Dr. Séamus Barra Ó Súilleabháin holds a PhD from Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, for his thesis entitled 'An Seanachaidhe agus an Sgríobhneóir: Seanchas agus samhlaíocht san ábhar a bhailigh Mícheál Ó Gaoithín ó Mháire 'Méiní' Ní Shé' [‘The storyteller and the writer: narrative and imagination in material collected by Mícheál Ó Gaoithín from Máire ‘Méiní’ Ní Shé’]. He spent a year working as a tour guide in the Blasket Centre in Dunquin and he regularly teaches on Summer courses in Áras Bhréanainn in Ballyferriter. He is currently lecturer in Modern Irish at University College Cork. He is also a song composer and poet, and his work can be heard online under the name ‘Súil Amháin’.
Dr. Kevin Power received his PhD in Philosophy from University College Cork in 2015. He has lectured in philosophy of mind, environmental ethics, philosophy of death and dying, as well as writing and delivering a unique module entitled 'The Philosophy of Interdependence' for UCC's Adult Continuing Education programme, and teaching Bioethics at the Dingle campus of Sacred Heart University. His research interests are philosophy of mind (in particular metaphysics of self), ecology, mysticism and the Irish philosopher John Moriarty.
Dr. Gordon Ramsey. After a varied career including serving as an infantry soldier and working as a motorcycle mechanic and archeological guide, Dr. Ramsey entered Queen’s University as an undergraduate in 2001 and went on to complete a PhD there in 2009. He has been teaching at Queen’s ever since and is currently a Lecturer in Anthropology and Ethnomusicology. His research focuses on traditional musics in Northern Ireland with a focus on the intersection of ethnic identity and social class and his book, Music, Emotion and Identity in Ulster Marching Bands was published by Peter Lang in 2011.
Dr Jolynna Sinanan is a Lecturer in Digital Anthropology in the Department of Social Anthropology and the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in Trinidad, Nepal, Australia and Cambodia and has published widely on digital and data practices, digital visual communication, intergenerational mobilities, work and gender. Her books include Social Media in Trinidad (2017), Visualising Facebook (with D. Miller 2017) and Digital Media Practices in Households (with L. Hjorth et al. 2021). Jolynna's current research is developing a long-term ethnography of the Everest economy.
Dr. Paul Stoller is currently Permanent Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences at Friedrich Alexander University (FAU) Erlanger-Nuremberg. For the past 15 years, Stoller, the author of 16 books, has facilitated ethnographic writing workshops in Europe, West Africa and the US. In 2013 King Carl Gustav of Sweden awarded him the Anders Retzius Gold Medal in Anthropology. In 2015 the American Anthropological Association presented him the Anthropology in Media Award. His most recent book is Wisdom from the Edge: Writing Ethnography in Turbulent Times.
Dr. Rosalie Stolz is the principal investigator of the project Construction Pioneers: Building Innovation in Upland Northern Laos funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Before starting in Cologne, she held a Guest Professorship at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Freie Universität Berlin. Rosalie is the author of Living Kinship, Fearing Spirits (2021, NIAS Press) and has published in various journals including American Anthropologist, Ethnos, Social Anthropology, Social Analysis and HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory among others. Rosalie conducts ethnographic fieldwork in northern Laos and aims to shed light on the changing lives of upland dwellers, in particular Khmu speakers.
Dr. Martin Toal is a lecturer in both intercultural studies and English as a second or other language (ESOL) in the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies at Dublin City University (DCU), Ireland. He is also the chairperson of the BA in Social Sciences and Cultural Innovation at DCU. His research interests include issues pertaining to intercultural communication and competence; He has a particular interest in the application of ethnography to issues relating to the integration of culturally diverse groups in new host society settings.
Prof. Alisse Waterston is Presidential Scholar and Professor Emerita, City University of New York, John Jay College of Criminal Justice and author or editor of seven books including Light in Dark Times: The Human Search for Meaning illustrated by Charlotte Corden. A Fellow of the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Studies in the Programmes in Transnational Processes, Structural Violence, and Inequality (2020-present), she served as President of the American Anthropological Association (2015-17). Waterston is editor of the Berghahn series, Intimate Ethnography and author of the award-winning My Father’s Wars: Migration, Memory and the Violence of a Century (10th anniversary edition forthcoming 2024).
Facilitators
Jennifer Ahern is a multi-disciplinary artist and environmental anthropologist. Currently pursuing a PhD with a Scholarship from the Environmental Research Institute as part of the University of Plymouth and UCC Doctoral Training Program. Focusing on sustainability framings for transformative change; her current research centres around systems thinking, art and the environment through community-based conservation in rural and urban Irish contexts.
Priyanka Borpujari is a Phan independent journalist, having reported on issues of human rights and justice from across Japan, Argentina, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Indonesia, El Salvador, and India. Her work has appeared in the British Medical Journal, Columbia Journalism Review, The Guardian, National Geographic, BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, TRT World, and several others. She has won numerous fellowships; she was a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at Nazareth College in Rochester, NY, where she taught media and human rights. Between 2018 and 2019, she has walked 1,200 kms across north and northeast India with two-time Pulitzer-winning journalist Paul Salopek, on his 33,000-km Out of Eden Walk, that traces the path of human migration. Borpujari is currently researching the intersection of gender, gerontology and social media within SALIS at Dublin City University. Her journalism can be found at https://priyankaborpujari.com/
Charlie Finucane is a 2nd year PhD student in anthropology at Queen’s University Belfast, working on the GroundsWell project, with the centre for public health, and a member of the Centre for Sustainability, Equality and Climate Action (SECA) at Queen’s. His research focuses on the use of public space, and environmental issues and how they can be used in conflict transformation projects in East Belfast. Charlie’s other areas of interest include green growth policies, the Irish diaspora and the use of urban green and blue spaces.
Brianna Griesinger is a PhD researcher in anthropology at Queen’s University Belfast, with a background in conflict transformation and social justice. Her research focuses on narrative and performance storytelling employed by feminists and activists pursuing reproductive justice in Peru. Her work considers transformative approaches to achieving reproductive justice through feminist identity development and community formation amidst a wide array of storytelling practices including testimony, informational resources, protest, as well as creative expression and performance.
Morgan Mattingly is a Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie early-stage researcher from Queen's University Belfast (QUB). Her current work explores the education experiences and resources of refugees and asylum seekers (RAS) to find ways to address education gaps and the digital divide by working with 16+ RAS to design solutions. An interdisciplinary researcher bridging Anthropology and Education, Morgan also has an academic background in communications, English literature and conflict transformation & social justice. Other interests include ESL, e-learning, inclusion, equity, trauma-informed practices, anthropology of design, the Capabilities Approach, UDL, education policy and the impact of education on civic participation and integration.
Molly McGrath is a PhD candidate at University of Cologne on a DFG funded project examining new material transitions in upland rural Laos. She also works in academic web design and moderation for various projects in Ireland and Germany. She has previously worked as a research assistant in the CyberSocial Research Lab and was Administrator for the Atlantic Anthropological for the 2023 edition. Her previous fieldwork concentrated on South America focusing on the coca plant with time spent particularly in Bolivia and Peru.
Lucy McSweeney is a PhD candidate with a scholarship at Trinity College Dublin on the project Digitising Biodiversity: Landscape – Animal – Digital – Human Translations, funded by the E3 Kinsella Challenge- Based Multidisciplinary Project Awards. Her research explores the different forms of human/non-human communication in specific locations and the nature of the translation paradigms underlying these practices. Lucy’s research is guided by posthumanism and uses translation theories alongside ethnographic methods.
Maria Bach Nielsen is Senior Project Manager and Industrial Ph.D. Fellow at the deep tech startup Cerebriu, with an affiliation to Aalborg University Copenhagen's Department of Sustainability and Planning, within the Techno-Anthropology and Participation (TAPAR) research group. With almost a half-decade of experience within the startup industry her research on the ETAARC project (Establishing Trust and Adoption of AI in Radiology Clinics: A Techno-Anthropological Approach Across Multiple Sites), endeavours to establish a valid methodology for fostering trust and successful adoption of AI-based decision support software in radiology. Her research is funded by the Innovation Fund Denmark and grounded in multi-site ethnography across various radiology clinics internationally, examining the integration of Cerebriu's AI product Apollo before and during its implementation. This project aims to contribute to the wider discourse on the ethical, social, and technological dimensions of integrating AI into healthcare practices
Gordon Ogutu is a PhD candidate at DCU School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies (SALIS). His research is focussed on refugee integration and social cohesion in protracted refugee camps, specifically the Kakuma refugee camps in Kenya. He has worked with NGOs supporting and advocating for refugee rights in Budapest, Dublin and Kenya.
Sara O'Rourke is a PhD researcher in The Department of Anthropology at Maynooth University. Her research looks at feminist iconography and affect in visual art and performance in Ireland, with a focus on the witch as an archetype. Her MA in anthropology was on memory and melancholy in the poetry of John Wieners.
Sharonne Specker is a PhD Candidate in Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews. Her research focuses on place and identity in contemporary learning contexts of Swiss folk music. She completed her BA and MA in Anthropology at the University of Victoria, Canada, and previously trained as a classical singer and voice instructor. Her research interests include the anthropology of place and landscape, learning practices, sound and sensory ethnography, identity and citizenship, collective memory and tradition, and creative research methodologies.
Peter Walsh is a research assistant and coordinator for the CyberSocial Research Lab at UCC. He combines clinical practice as a working psychotherapist with research interests in the overlapping areas of mental health, emotion and technology. He is the recipient of a fellowship grant from Université libre de Bruxelles to begin doctoral research on Mental Health in the context of the Metaverse.