CUSAS: “Trajectories Around Objects: An Account” with Dr Ludovic Coupaye

Dr Coupaye conducted his fieldwork among the Nyamikum Abelam of Papua New Guinea. His interlocutors carefully cultivate large yams which they handle as art objects. The monograph he wrote from this ethnography (published in 2013) pioneered a non-anthropocentric approach to the study of artefacts. Since then, Coupaye’s work has centred artefacts, contributing to the anthropology of “techniques” and “technical objects”. He has developed this approach by bringing Francophone and Anglophone anthropology into dialogue. Dr Coupaye will join us for an informal conversation in which he will reflect on his work, ethnographic experience, and his intellectual trajectory. Rather than being purely “autobiographical”, Dr Coupaye will reflect on the enduring importance of material culture and non-anthropocentric approaches in anthropology.

Dr Ludovic Coupaye is Associate Professor of Anthropology at University College London. His research blends together several interrelated fields of enquiries, mostly embedded in the anthropology of material culture, more specifically in the anthropology of technics and technology. He is author of Growing Artefacts, Displaying Relationships: Yams, Art and Technology amongst the Nyamikum Abelam of Papua New Guinea (2013).