easa

Laboratories (labs) at EASA2018

Following EASA2014's and EASA2016’s successful experience with Laboratories as spaces of communication characterized by experimentation, collaboration, interaction or improvisation, we will again hold Laboratories at EASA2018. The conveners of EASA2018 envision Laboratories as spaces for experimentation with heterogeneous media of learning and presentation, as alternatives to text-based presentation.

In the Call for Labs, the conveners of the EASA2018 Labs' stream invited participants to use Laboratories to rethink anthropological forms of knowledge (production). The anthropologist is still often imagined as an individual moving ‘there’ to present its knowledge ‘here’; while at the same time anthropology is increasingly done at home or in collaborative settings. Moreover, fieldwork moves into spaces hitherto unexplored by the discipline, such as boardrooms and scientific laboratories. From multi-sited ethnography, to speculative fiction, to the realms of the digital: Ethnography continues to move in different directions, expanding and stretching the concept in the process.

Laboratories offer participants the possibility to move beyond the paper format and explore aspects of our work that do not fit the traditional scholarly mould of 20-minute presentations in front of a more or less attentive audience. Rather than exhibiting already finished work, the aim of Laboratories is to organize collective research activities that, crucially, are open-ended and cultivate possibilities for surprise, novelty and learning. Orchestrating interventions in work-in-progress, participants’ involvement and sharing of insights and skills are at the forefront. In this sense, Laboratories exploit an important strength of anthropology: that its forms of knowledge making are never settled. By moving out of the conference room, Laboratories allow for rethinking the spaces of anthropological knowledge production, as well as attending to the embodiment of knowledge and the sensorial character of experience.

Laboratories may include activities that aim at training or innovating anthropological methods, or experimenting with forms of ethnographic expression and analysis. Among the possibilities are installations, training sessions and performances. These may include music, dance, painting or other creative arts, physical and sensorial techniques such as meditation or movement, and make use of media such as radio, internet or film. Additionally, the beautiful nature areas in the vicinity to Stockholm University offer opportunities for inspirational outdoor activities. Lastly, Laboratories may seek to nurture spaces in which it is possible to explore the challenges and potentials of dynamic interactions with collaborators in interdisciplinary environments, policy settings, or through activism.

Applicants should indicate all practical needs, material requirements and limitations for their Laboratories in the long abstract of the original proposal. Labs cannot have named, pre-selected contributions the way panels have papers, but it is possible to limit the number of participants through pre-registration.

Lab programme co-ordinators
Else Vogel, Johan Nilsson

 

View the labs  

 

Any queries with the above please email conference(at)easaonline.org