Digital Anthropology Lab

06/11/2023

The Digital Anthropology Lab has a new website! Visit us to see our people, projects and work areas. We decided not to share our regular updates anymore via Facebook, but you can find all updates on our website or register for our newsletter! https://digitalanthropologylab.org/

14/09/2023

Happy to share a call for papers for the conference at the end of October at Masaryk University: https://emorob.fss.muni.cz/CONFERENCE

The aim of the conference is to open a discussion on the topic of “computing the human.” It is intended as a “melting pot” for interdisciplinary debate reflecting the complexity of the issues: cultural history of computing, human-computer interaction (HCI), and emotion programming, all framed by the ethos of diversity and inclusion in computing and artificial intelligence.

Application still open until Sep 20th.

ExpertTurn will explain the character of governance and the construction of health and normalcy through human-science expertise during state socialism in East-Central Europe.

20/07/2023

Unfortunately, we have to cancel next week’s session due to an overlap in dates. So we close this semester with Janina Schwarz’s session last week on “Commemorating the Shoah Digitally” and postpone our session on “Using Assemblage Thinking in Digital Anthropology” to next semester. Many thanks to all our speakers for sharing insights into their interesting projects over the last few months, and thanks to everyone for attending, discussing and commenting!

Mark your calendars for the winter term 2023/24 before we see you off for the summer break:

- October 19 (Welcome Session)
- November 2
- November 16
- November 30
- December 14
- January 11
- January 25

As usual, the sessions will take place on Thursdays from 4:15 to 5:45 pm, with participation possible both online and at the LUI. If you already know that you’d like to use one of the sessions to discuss your research project and share what you’re currently working on, you can choose one of the dates (except for the first session) and contact us by email (email address: https://digitalanthropologylab.org) or let us know at the first session in October.

There’s not much more to say, except to wish you a restful and inspiring break!

11/07/2023

It’s been two weeks since our last Digital Anthropology Lab session with Dr. Maja Sawicka (Warsaw), with whom we discussed some of her project's key concepts on digital community and digital public. Next up is Janina Schwarz (Marburg), who will give us an insight into her PhD project and discuss "Digital Shoah Remembrance - A Case for Digital Anthropology?!"

Janina Schwarz introduces the diverse field of digital Shoah memory projects and asks specifically about the role that digital anthropology plays in her work. In her project, she explores how digital memory is currently being produced and, against this background, seeks fresh inspiration for theoretical and methodological refinement in the open and collegial exchange of the lab.

We are excited to hear about this project and discuss! If you are too, then join us on Thursday, July 13, at 4:15 pm (reach out for access information).

06/07/2023

We want to draw your attention to the following Call for Papers for the conference “Interactive Documentary: Laboratory and Experiment”. The conference focuses on the experimental character of web-based documentaries encouraging interaction by offering material to choose from or by showing users different ways to click on and play with content. Amongst other things it asks: How can a documentary be considered as an experiment and what is specific about documentation as an experimental setting?

The conference is organized by the SNSF research project "Interactive Documentary", of which our lab member Vanessa Zallot is part. It will take place on February 1st and 2nd 2024 in Lucerne, deadline for submissions is October 31st. More information about the call can be found in the link below:

https://blog.hslu.ch/interdocs/cfp-interactive-documentary-laboratory-and-experiment/

26/06/2023

Happy to announce this week's hands-on lab session with Dr. Maja Sawicka (Warsaw) on “Affective (counter)publics, digital communities or socio-technical assemblages? Defining key concepts to account for the social construction of vaccination-hesitant cyber collectives on Facebook“.

During the session, Maja would like to discuss key concepts for her project “Meaning-making in Digital Counterpublics. The emergence of emotion norms in a Facebook vaccination hesitant community in response to the COVID-19 pandemic”. Rather than presenting a ready-made analytical framework, Maja would like to reflect with the session participants upon a conceptualisation in progress. The aim will be to discuss the differences between digital communities and digital publics in terms of their digital localisation, mechanisms of emotion sharing, and dynamics of meaning-making. As their project is in its early stages, any suggestions and ideas for further development will be highly appreciated!

Reach out for information on how to participate online as well as in person!

12/06/2023

The third session of this semester's program is coming up! We welcome Dr. Dennis Eckhardt (FAU Nuremberg), who will share insights into his Postdoc project and talk about „The Smart, the Home, the Secure and the Others: Doing Interdisciplinary Ethnography in and About Smart Living Environments“.

The Bavarian Research Association ForDaySec does research on how to secure the everyday digitalization of people. For this reason, the research of Dennis Eckhardt puts focus on the everyday practices of people living in smart homes and tinkering their own living environments. The research also tries to work interdisciplinary with informatics, pentesters and digital forensics. You can find more information about ForDaySec here: https://fordaysec.de

We are excited to hear about this project! If you are too, then join us next Thursday, June 15, at 16:15 pm. Reach out for access information.

24/05/2023

After a few weeks break, we invite you all to the next session of the Digital Anthropology Lab tomorrow, May 25, at 4:15 pm. Cornelia Richter (Tübingen) will give an insight into her ongoing work on her masters thesis on "Biodynamic Farming and Digitalization". You are welcome to join our session via zoom or in person (reach out for the link or directions).

Looking forward to our session tomorrow!

03/05/2023

Our season of lab-sessions in this semester starts tomorrow! Join us on Thursday, 4:15 pm (May 4th) to learn more about Veera Ojala’s (University of Turku) research on „Chornobyl visual lexicon“.

Veera is a PhD researcher from the University of Turku and „exploring the visual framing of toxic heritage from the point of view of participatory culture as captured in the photographs uploaded on the Flickr platform in 2008, 2013, and 2018“. Even though the Chornobyl exclusion zone (CEZ) is one of the most well-photographed and visually documented sites, little is known about the evolution of its visual framing from the point of view of participatory culture. Through three different points in time—2008, 2013, and 2018—this study explores the emerging photographic practices of the visitors to the exclusion zone. The purpose of this study is to provide insights into the digital participatory culture as an agent, which changes the way in which heritage is viewed, perceived, and experienced.

You can join us via zoom or in presence (reach out for for info).
Hope to see you tomorrow!

© Veera Ojala (2019)

02/05/2023

As some of you may already know, we have been busy over the last term building a new digital home for the Digital Anthropology Lab. Now the result is ready and we are happy to show you the Digital Anthropology Lab website: https://digitalanthropologylab.org

The idea behind creating the website was to make the lab more visible and to promote the lab's work and network. Therefore, the core of the website consists of three pages: "people" represents the network and the members of the lab, "projects" shows the research projects of the members and on the "work areas" page you can find the areas of interest of the lab in general. The special quality of the Lab website is to show the connections between people, projects and work areas. For this reason, all three elements are represented and linked on the respective pages. In addition to these three pages, the website contains some general information about the lab, the semester program and general news, as well as publications by lab members. On the website we also show who 'we' are: of course, this is just the regular members. We also have our MA students and many guests who come to our meetings from time to time. What this means is that, as always, all guests and students are welcome to attend our sessions, even if they don't want to become full members of the lab. So, please feel welcome to join us anytime!

Many thanks go to our web developer Mihály Podobni, who created the website together with us and implemented all our ideas with a lot of flexibility, creativity and patience - thank you!

Please feel warmly invited to check out the website and spread the link.

Happy exploring!

© Created with DALL·E

28/04/2023

Here comes the program of the Digital Anthropology Lab for the summer semester 2023! A warm invitation to everyone to join and participate in our sessions:

* May 4: Veera Ojala, M.A. (Turku):
"Chornobyl Visual Lexicon: Exploring the Visual Framing of Toxic Heritage from the Point of View of Participatory Culture as Captured in the Photographs Uploaded on the Flickr Platform in 2008, 2013, and 2018."

* May 25: Cornelia Richter, B.A. (Tübingen):
"Biodynamic Farming and Digitalization"

* June 15: Dr. Dennis Eckhardt (Erlangen-Nuremberg):
"The Smart, the Home, the Secure and the Others: Doing Interdisciplinary Ethnography in and about Smart Living Environments"

* June 29: Dr. Maja Sawicka (Warsaw):
"Affective (counter)publics, digital communities or socio-technical assemblages? Defining key concepts to account for the social construction of vaccination-hesitant cyber collectives on Facebook“

* July 13: Janina Schwarz, M.A. (Marburg):
"Commemorating the Shoah Digitally"

* July 27:
tba

The lab sessions will always take place on Thursdays from 4:15pm to 5:45pm. Continuing with the hybrid format, you can join in presence at the LUI or online via zoom (reach out for the zoom link or directions).

We’ll keep you updated and are looking forward to see you next week!

15/04/2023

We are jumping into the summer semester and inviting you to the digital anthropology lab at the LUI in Tübingen. The first session will be on April 20 and we are looking forward to seeing old and new faces and learning about interesting research projects in the following months!

As usual, the lab sessions will take place on Thursdays from 4:15pm to 5:45pm and everyone is welcome to join our sessions for discussing and sharing thoughts. Participation is possible online as well as in presence hybrid format (please reach out for zoom link and directions).

We’ll finalize the program in the first session, so if you’d like to use one of the sessions to discuss your research and share what you’re currently working on, you can choose amongst the following dates (first excluded) and reach out to us or let us know in the first session in April.

- April 20 (Welcome Session)
- May 4
- May 25
- June 15
- June 29
- July 13
- July 27

As usual, we will keep you in the loop and send updates about the sessions and discussions via mailing list as well as here on Facebook.

Happy to see you soon!