Senior Seminar

Senior Research Seminar with Professor Morten Pedersen (Copenhagen University) Anthropology after AI (and vice versa) Drawing on more than a decade of experience from the interdisciplinary space between anthropology, data science, and tech governance, this talk explores the relationship between anthropology and artificial...

Inaugural Lecture with Professor Rebecca Cassidy (University of Cambridge) From studs to orchards: making kin in multispecies worlds

Senior Research Seminar with Professor Myles Lennon (Brown University) Combustion Beyond Reason We have plenty of reasonable data mapping out how we can transition from fossil fuels to solve the climate crisis. While this reasonable data informs important policy frameworks, it also hasn’t catalyzed the utopic horizons it...

A World Without Mosquitoes: Vector Liveliness and Necroethical Labour at the Edge of Control Mosquitoes offer a limiting case for thinking about how life becomes available—or unavailable—for intervention. Understood as vectors, they are rendered legible through techniques of knowing oriented towards killability...

The Uncanny Magic of Bomb Mail: Why Writing on Munitions is Compelling The ancient practice of writing inscriptions on weapons has taken on new life in recent years, as social media has enabled countless civilians around the world to commission bespoke inscriptions on shells fired by Ukraine, Russia, and Israel. The...

Settler Socialism, Social Parasitism: Labor, Addiction, and (Dis)incorporation in Kyrgyzstan Drawing on ethnographic research in southern Kyrgyzstan, my talk delves into the lives and worlds of chronically homeless and unemployed populations struggling with opioid and alcohol addiction, many of whom are descended from...

Hava : traces of enjoyment in Ghaziabad city, India In this paper, I show how enjoyment , or a short-lived kind of love, leaves traces of the past, and provides possibilities for the future in people’s lives across space and time in urbanising Ghaziabad. Based on an ethnography of college-going young women, I do so by...

Proofers of Change: horror, glee, and emotional editing in climate (in)action Scientist Rebellion, the international organisation of climate activists with a scientific background, recently asked: "What's the point of documenting in ever greater detail the catastrophe we face, if we're not willing to do anything about it...

Cosmograms and Trap Cosmologies This talk presents cosmograms— objects which express the universe as a whole— as useful objects for anthropology, science studies, and history. Looking at when, why, and with what materials people depict the cosmos to each other can shed light on the cosmopolitical contexts of individual and...

Senior Research Seminar 28th November with Professor Sian Lazar (University of Cambridge) States of suspension. Life in Argentina’s political laboratory. sian_lazar_srs_image.png In the last five years, Argentines have experienced pandemic, runaway inflation, and extreme political-economic experimentation. A year after...