Material, Visual and Digital Culture seminars
Examining the material and visual dimensions of human life, from artefacts and images to emerging digital worlds.
Spring 2026
Daryll Forde Seminar Room | Mondays 17:00-18:30
Please contact Rafael Schacter for further information.
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Between Thought and Expression Lies a Lifetime: The Inner Lifeworlds of Motor Neurone Disease
Professor Andrew Irving | University of Manchester
12 January
Fieldnotes, Library Scans and the Ethnographic Narrative After Catastrophe
Professor Yael Navaro | University of Cambridge
19 January
The Minor Detail of Palestine in Holocaust Archives: On Secular Denial and Palestinian Refusal of Displacement
Dr Sultan Doughan is Lecturer | Goldsmiths, University of London)
26 January
ARTs/KNOWLEDGE/DATA: Caring for Indigenous materials across museums and digital archives
Dr Jessica de Largy-Healy | CNRS-Université Paris Nanterre)
2 February
Becoming Anarchival
Kate Hennessy
9 February
Making and Tech Engagements: Embodied praxis and digital technologies in Lomé, Togo
Dr Janine Patricia Santos | UCL
23 February
Materialist Approaches to Cinematic Creation
Dr Chihab El Khachab | University of Oxford
2 March
Land-Skin-Image: Photography as Tactile Relation
Mridu Rai | UCL
9 March
The Contemporary Crisis Around Epistemology: Between Naïve Positivism and Sturdy Knowledge
Professor Gabriella Coleman | Harvard University
16 March
Material Culture, Techniques of the Living and Anthropology of Life
Perig Pitrou | CNRS
Maison Française | Oxford & Collège de France, University PSL
29 September
Breaker of images? Synthetic aperture radar and the rise of satellite iconoclasm
Mia Bennet | Dept of Geography, Univeristy of Washington
6 October
Space Art: Investigating social relations of other worlds', a conversation between Dr David (Jeeva) Jeevendrampillai (Anthropologist) and Dr Sarah Fortais (Artist)
David Jeevendrampillai | Dept of Anthropology University of Manchester
13 October
Space Suits, lungs, regulation and power
Aaron Parkhurst | Dept of Anthropology UCL
20 October
[CANCELLED] Value struggles in European human spaceflight
Giles Bunch | Dept of Anthropology UCL
27 October
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)
The Sex of Sex Work: Subjecthood and the ethico-technical vernacular of sex workers
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.
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
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.
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
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
Study with us
Digital Anthropology MSc
Study how digital technologies - from social media to AI - shape humans, relationships, and society.
Material and Visual Culture MA
Examine objects and visual media - from art and architecture to photography and fashion - to understand how cultures and societies work.