果冻影院

Spring 2024

Wednesdays 1.00 - 2.00pm | Daryll Forde Seminar Room | Department of Anthropology

Bring your own lunch!

17 January 鈥� Harshadha (Harsha) Balasubramanian (果冻影院)
鈥淒esigning Non-visual Access to Virtual Reality with Independent Artists from the UK鈥�

At a moment when the hype around virtual reality (VR) is sharply declining, why are some independent artists still hoping for the medium to be accessed by new audiences, particularly in non-visual ways? How are these VR novices transforming digital accessibility through their approaches and justifications rooted in 鈥渁rt work鈥�- performance, film, fashion, and photography? What might all this mean for virtual, reality, and the in-between?

Please come to co-reflect by means of, as my interlocutors would say, dialogue, description, and performance.

Harshadha (Harsha) Balasubramanian (果冻影院) is a PhD candidate in the Centre for Digital Anthropology at 果冻影院 and teaches on inclusive design at the Royal College of Art.

31 January 鈥� Abhishek Mohanty (SOAS)
鈥淚ntersectional Analytics: Classical ethnography in an emergent Digital World鈥�

During my fieldwork, I adopted an intersectional analytic. This was a response to the diversity of my fieldsites and the issues of comparison. In particular, I will talk about this experience of (and what it means to be) carrying out classical ethnography on an evolving and emergent digital world.听

Abhishek Mohanty is a PhD researcher in Social Anthropology at SOAS, studying how health app start-ups imagine futures. He also teaches a module on the anthropological perspectives of AI and social robotics. His background includes management consulting and entrepreneurship with prior research on teleconsultation (India), online representations of mask-wearing (UK), alternative ontologies adopted by tech start-up founders (India), online governance during COVID19 (UK), as well as propositions curated in digital spaces by tech companies (India and Romania).

21 February 鈥� Amelia Hassoun (Cambridge)
鈥淢aking Space for the Future: Imagining the Smart Nation in Singapore鈥�

Through an ethnography of two 鈥淪mart Nation鈥� smart home projects in Singapore, I detail how state planners project and replicate future and sometimes exclusionary imaginaries and how residents materially engage with these, sometimes replicating and sometimes reimagining them, through navigating their 鈥渢echnological everyday鈥� (Amin 2007).

Amelia Hassoun is an anthropologist, currently a Junior Research Fellow at Darwin College, University of Cambridge and a Research Fellow at the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, University of Cambridge. She obtained her PhD while based at the Oxford Institute of Internet Studies.

20 March 鈥� Jennifer Cearns (果冻影院)
鈥淜inship as code: generating personhood and afterlives through AI鈥�

Drawing on anthropological theories of personhood, dividuality and affect theory, this talk examines how emerging generative AI technologies are used to maintain relationships with departed loved ones and considers this development within the broader trajectory of the use of the techno-material to commemorate and actualise human relationships. Using code to define the 鈥榚dges鈥� of the self creates new engagements with questions of both self and relatedness.

Jennifer Cearns obtained her PhD at the Dept. of Anthropology 果冻影院 and is an Affiliate Research Fellow of the Centre of Digital Anthropology and of the Alan Turing Institute, whose research addresses AI in the realm of the (inter)subjective. Her current project considers how AI might simulate empathy within the context of digital mental healthcare. She is author of Circulating Culture (University of Florida Press, 2023) and co-editor of Contraband Cultures (果冻影院 Press, 2024).

础耻迟耻尘苍听2023

Wednesdays 1.00 - 2.00pm | 14 Taviton Street |听Darryll Forde Seminar Room

11听October - Craig Ryder (SOAS)
"Digital capital as resistance in post-pandemic Sri Lanka"

Craig will be introducing his experimental approach that marries traditional ethnography and computational science to produce new and exciting results. His research includes six months in Sri Lanka collaborating and making content with what he calls 鈥渋nformation influencers鈥�, and six months training at the University of Helsinki where he learnt how to extract and visualise big data from Twitter. Taken together, Craig wants to advance the notion of an 鈥渁ugmented ethnography鈥� (Pohjonen, 2020).

[CANCELLED] 25 October - Amelia Hassoun (Cambridge) - please note this seminar has been postponed until Term 2
"Making Space for the Future: Imagining the Smart Nation in Singapore"

15 November - Silas Udenze (果冻影院)
"S贸r贸 S贸k茅: Exploring Nigeria`s听听Movement through the lens of Memory"

22 November听- Jo Krishnakumar (SOAS)
"Exploring Digital Activism and Advocacy: Insights from Sex Workers', Queer and Trans Rights Collectives in India"

6 December听- Fabian Broeker (LSE)
"Dating Apps and Narrativisation"

Spring 2023

Seminars marked "in person" are taking place in person in听IOE - Bedford Way (20) C3.11.

Seminars marked "online" are taking place online only on Zoom.

Contact: Alecia Carter

[CANCELLED] 10 January听Victoria Herridge (Natural History Museum)听-听in person
Title TBC

17听闯补苍耻补谤测听Andrea DiGiorgio (Princeton University)听-听in person
Bornean Orangutan Diet and Health - Novel Insights from Nutritional Geometry

24 January听Krishna Balasubramanian (Anglia Ruskin University)听-听in person
Unravelling the links between animal socio-ecology, human-wildlife interactions, & infectious disease ecology: insights from nonhuman primates

31 January听Habiba Chirchir (Marshall University) -听in person
Title TBC

7 February Alecia Carter (果冻影院) -听in person
Primates' responses to death: insights into death awareness?

Reading Week 听**NO SEMINAR**

[CANCELLED] 21 February听Laura Lewis (UC Berkeley) - online
Title TBC

[CANCELLED] 28听February听TBC听- online
Title TBC

7 March听Laura Lewis (UC Berkeley) - online

14 March听Wenda Trevathan (New Mexico State University) - online
Are Humans 鈥淛ust Another Primate鈥� in the Way They Give Birth?