15th EASA Biennial Conference
Staying, Moving, Settling
Stockholm University
14-17 August, 2018
Laboratories (labs) at EASA2018
Anthropologists
are still often imagined as individuals moving ‘there’ to
present their knowledge ‘here’ – usually in the form of a monograph or
academic
paper. 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.
Happening in new ways and in new places, anthropological knowledge and
how it
is produced will change. From multi-sited ethnography to speculative
fiction and 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 conference Laboratories
organise collective
research activities that 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 put 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.
The
convenors
of EASA2018 lab programme are excited to announce a diverse and
creative set of
laboratories for this year. The laboratories of this conference
include hands-on
sessions that aim at exploring, training or innovating anthropological
methods,
such as focus groups. Some experiment with forms of ethnographic
expression
through crafts, drama, and embodied experience. Dance, arts and
physical and
sensorial techniques such as meditation or movement as well as
experimental use
of media are all featured in this years’ labs. Moreover, through
activities
both inside the buildings of Stockholm University and outside on the
university
grounds, the laboratory sessions 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. Lastly, some laboratories foreground anthropology as a
discipline,
focusing on diversity and the accessibility to anthropological work.
Lab programme co-ordinators
Else Vogel, Johan Nilsson
View the labs
Any queries with the above please email conference(at)easaonline.org
