Dr Guilherme Orlandini Heurich
Honorary Research Fellow
Dept of Anthropology
Faculty of S&HS
- Joined UCL
- 1st May 2020
Research summary
Gui Heurich is conducting a long-term fieldwork with computer programmers as part of his Leverhulme Trust project "CODE.ANTH: language, learning, and programming in computational cultures". CODE.ANTH starts with the following question: can anthropologists strengthen their knowledge of computational cultures by learning how to code? CODE.ANTH will pursue answers to this question by looking at how coders discuss and write code, how they conceive of a computer's “reading” and “interpretation” of information, and how they teach machines to learn.
The aims of this research are twofold:
1) To develop a new research method that combines a traditional ethnographic study with the technical knowledge of coding.
2) To establish, based on this research method, the anthropology of programming as a new field of study at the intersection of linguistic anthropology and digital anthropology – two sub-fields that have so far not been put into dialogue.
The current state of this project can be found here: http://code-anth.xyz
Previously, Heurich's research focused on the role of language in how indigenous communities in South America conceive of and are affected by relationships with other-than-human beings such as deceased kin, spirits and divinities.
Teaching summary
Heurich has taught lectures in the following modules: Linguistic Anthropology, Anthropology of War, and Forest Peoples.
Biography
Gui Heurich obtained his PhD in Social Anthropology at Rio de Janeiro's Museu Nacional (Brazil) working under Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. Heurich conducted his doctoral fieldwork with the Araweté in Eastern Amazonia from 2011 to 2013. After his PhD, Heurich obtained a British Academy Newton International Fellowship, which brought him to UCL Anthropology in 2016. He currently holds a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship at UCL Anthropology which started in 2020.