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Material, Visual and Digital Culture seminars

Spring 2025

Mondays 5.00 - 6.30pm | Daryll Forde Seminar Room | Department of Anthropology


13 January | Cross-Sectional Synergy Seminar
Angela McArthur (UCL) 
Sonic materiality as knowing
Dalia Iskander (UCL) Miniature Antidotes: The Healing Effects of Crafting Across Scales


20 January | Isaac Marrero-Guillamon (Goldsmiths) 
The Promise of Multimodality: Atmospheres of Listening and Hospitable Gestures


27 January | Joe Tulasiewicz (UCL) 
The Psychic Ocean: Framing Case Studies of Internet Addiction with Eastern European Science Fiction


3 February | Camille Crichlow (Sarah Parker Remond Centre) 
Coding Face, Enumerating Race


10 February | Ken Zheng (UCL) 
Ghosts in the Algorithmic Systems


24 February | Chloe Dominique (UCL) 
Title TBC


3 March | Vindhya Buthpitiya (University of St Andrews) 
Measures, Mediations and the Time of Violence: Recounting Sri Lanka’s ‘Black July’


10 March |  Alice McAlpine-Riddell (UCL) 
Safety Traps and Tricks: Pink Securitization & Securitizing the Everyday


17 March | Stefan Tarnowski (University of Cambridge) 
Just Images: User-Generated Content, International Law, and Counterforensics


Please contact Rafael Schacter for further information.

Past seminars

Autumn 2024

30th September – Alexandra D’Onofrio, University of Manchester 
Aesthetics of possibility: practicing ethnography in the subjunctive mode 


7th October – Martin Webb, Goldsmiths 
Putting the selfie to work: Image making and work/time discipline in the margins of the Indian state 


14th October – Dieter Deswarte, UCL 
The Art of Collaboration 


21st October – Jo Krishnakumar, LSE 
Translating, Constructing, Failing: Using Patchwork and Scavenger Methodologies to Understand Transnational Experiences of Violence, Care, Kinship and Advocacy 


28th October – Helena Hunter, Scottish Association of Marine Science 
Title TBC

Spring 2024

8 January – Toby Austin Locke (University College London)
"ADHD, communities of care and vernacular anthropologies of attention economics on TikTok"


15 January – Nick Seaver (Tufts University) (UCL Centre for Digital Anthropology Annual Lecture)
"Computing Taste: Care and Control in Algorithmic Recommendation"


22 January – Yathu Yogarajah (University College London)        
"Petrol Station Dreams: Blurred lines between exploitation and extortion"


29 January – Rik Adriaans (University College London)
"A Sound of One’s Own: Modular Synthesizers and Post-Digital Culture"


5 February – Akanksha Awal (University College London)
"Love as Enjoyment: Hopelessness, Play and Desirable Futures in India"


19 February – David Jeevendrampillai (University College London)
"Urban planning at home and in the sky: politics of belonging and new frontiers of colonial power"


26 February – Kellynn Wee (University College London)
"Worlds beyond words: Atmospheres, bodies, and materiality in the staging of tabletop roleplaying game fantasies"


4 March – Emilie Glazer (University College London)
"Care and its dispossessions: Jerusalem waters, affective politics, and the infrastructures of the Anthropocene"


11 March – Hermione Spriggs (University College London)
"On Capture: a practice-based ethnography of mole catching in North Yorkshire"
With discussant Jonas Tinius (Humboldt University/Saarland University)

Please contact Rafael Schacter for further information.

Autumn 2023

Seminar convenors: Susanne Kuechler s.kuechler@ucl.ac.uk and Shireen Walton shireen.walton@ucl.ac.uk

16 January - Graeme Were (University of Bristol)
Museums, Collections and Social Repair: Transforming the Past in Vietnam


23 January - Haichao Wang (UCL)
Beyond Social E-commerce: a comparative study of practicing values in Chinese Hui Muslims Jama’at


30 January - Emma Tarlo (Professor Emerita, Goldsmiths)
Hairy Entanglements – working towards a public anthropology


[Cancelled] 6 February - Elena Liber (UCL)
“The First TikTok War”: Narratives of conflict and emergency on TikTok


Reading Week


20 February - Heather A. Horst (Western Sydney University)
Doing kalavata: The performance and practice of collective identity


27 February - Elena Liber (UCL)
“The First TikTok War”: Narratives of conflict and emergency on TikTok


6 March - Kevin Smets (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
(De)bordering imaginations: “reel” power struggles in a bordered world


13 March - Karen Strassler (Queens College, Graduate Center of the City University of New York) [*on Zoom*]
The Mirror and the Lens: image-work and bodily reckoning after breast cancer

Spring 2023

Seminar convenors: Susanne Kuechler s.kuechler@ucl.ac.uk and Shireen Walton shireen.walton@ucl.ac.uk

16 January - Graeme Were (University of Bristol)
Museums, Collections and Social Repair: Transforming the Past in Vietnam


23 January - Haichao Wang (UCL)
Beyond Social E-commerce: a comparative study of practicing values in Chinese Hui Muslims Jama’at


30 January - Emma Tarlo (Professor Emerita, Goldsmiths)
Hairy Entanglements – working towards a public anthropology


[Cancelled] 6 February - Elena Liber (UCL)
“The First TikTok War”: Narratives of conflict and emergency on TikTok


Reading Week


20 February - Heather A. Horst (Western Sydney University)
Doing kalavata: The performance and practice of collective identity


27 February - Elena Liber (UCL)
“The First TikTok War”: Narratives of conflict and emergency on TikTok


6 March - Kevin Smets (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
(De)bordering imaginations: “reel” power struggles in a bordered world


13 March - Karen Strassler (Queens College, Graduate Center of the City University of New York) [*on Zoom*]
The Mirror and the Lens: image-work and bodily reckoning after breast cancer