PROJECTS
Current
-2023-2027. The Body and the City (PI)
Research line funded by a Ramón y Cajal fellowship (RYC2021-033410-I, Spanish National Scientific, Technical and Innovation Research Programme 2021-2023) at the Open University of Catalonia’s CareNet-IN3 group.
-2023-2024: Multimodal appreciation: Prototypes for the evaluation and institutionalisation of more-than-textual ethnography (co-PIs: Ignacio Farías, Tomás Criado, Andrew Gilbert), Stadtlabor for Multimodal Anthropology, funded by the Volkswagen Stiftung‘s Open Up programme)
This project takes on an impossible problem. Ethnographers from across the humanities and social sciences have recently experimented with multimodal forms of description, analysis and intervention in order to grasp slippery research objects that otherwise remain outside of the apprehensible. This multimodal turn has resulted in a proliferation of more-than-textual forms that are impossible to classify and at odds with institutionalised modes of disciplinary knowledge production. Despite the important openings created by multimodal works, they are rarely seen as of equal value when compared to articles and monographs. The current situation is problematic but to a certain extent understandable, as peers, reviewers and supervisors are confronted with a complex conundrum: What criteria should be employed to evaluate such multimodal singularities? This project responds to this conundrum through two experimental moments that correspond to the two challenges producing the current impasse, those of evaluation and institutionalisation. The first moment is constituted by a set of immersive exercises designed to describe and compare the affordances of selected more-than-textual or multimodal research artefacts. The second moment is a set of prototyping exercises designed to produce and test a toolkit to facilitate the evaluation and institutionalisation of future multimodal research.
Team: Judith Albrecht, Tomás Criado, Ignacio Farías, Andrew Gilbert, and Karina Piersig.
2018-ongoing. An uncommon city: Bodily diversity and the activation of possible urbanisms (book project)
The book is an anthropological exploration of bodily diversity and its impact in the material and knowledge politics of city-making. Drawing on field and archival work with independent-living and disability rights movements, paying attention in particular to their urban struggles as well as their pedagogic interventions in the training of architects, city planners, and designers (with materials mostly from Barcelona, but also from how I went back to those learnings whilst teaching to architects in Munich and Berlin), I trace a wealth of activist initiatives caring for an epistemic, material and political activation of urban design.
Past
-2021-2022. Trash Games — Playing with the Circular Economy Transition at the Haus der Materialisierung (PI: Vera S. Rotter, Recycling engineering, TU Berlin; Co-PI: Tomás Criado, Stadtlabor for Multimodal Anthropology, HU Berlin – Funded by the Berlin University Alliance 2021-2022 call for Experimental Science Communication Laboratories)
The project “Trash Games: Playing with the Circular Economy Transition at the HdM” has brought together the Chair of Circular Economy and Recycling Technologies (CERT, Technische Universität Berlin) and the Stadtlabor for Multimodal Anthropology (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) to develop and explore games and game design as formats of public engagement with the Circular Economy (CE). The idea of a circular economy goes beyond current top-down efforts to achieve sustainable development by extending the life of products and the materials they contain through their reuse, repair, remanufacturing and recycling. In this project we have experimented with games as a special form of science communication enabling accessible, speculative and interactive forms of participation of non-homogeneous publics in complex topics. In cooperation with actors of the civic platform “Haus der Materialisierung” – part of the Haus der Statistik, flagship project for community-oriented neighborhood development in Berlin –, as well as other circular economy initiatives from Berlin, we undertook a several months-long research process, resulting in the prototyping of a game that explores potentials and conflicts in the social transition to a collaboratively managed circular economy.
Stadtlabor’s anthropological research and game design team: Petra Beck, Sebastian Quack, Ignacio Farías & Tomás Criado.
Main result: WASTE WHAT? An open-source game on the many ways to reuse stuff!
-2015-2018: Accessibility Values: Disability rights movements, political regulations and market devices in the design of urban democracy in Europe (Individual research project)
An ethnographic research project (involving fieldwork, interviews, and archival work) on inclusive urbanism struggles and the creation, implementation, maintenance and supervision of sidewalk democracy projects in Europe, with a focus on Barcelona and Spain. Funded by Assistant Professorship of Participatory Technology Design, Munich Center for Technology in Society & Deparment of Architecture, Technical University of Munich .
– 2012-2014. Participatory experiences in the design of independent living technologies & services (Postdoctoral project at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)
An ethnographic research project on different practices of participatory & collaborative design for ‘independent living’ and urban accessibility, taking part as a member of the “En torno a la silla” design collective. Funded by: An Alliance 4 Universities postdoctoral fellowship; and the Spanish National R&D programme 2011-2014 “Political Action of Groups Concerned with the Promotion of Independent Living in Spain (EXPDEM)” (CSO2011-29749-C02-02) research project.
– 2007-2012. The logics of telecare: The fabrication of ‘connected autonomy’ in telecare for older people (PhD in Social Anthropology, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid).
The result of an ethnographic project on home telecare devices for older people in the region of Madrid (Spain), in which I focused on the practices of implementation and use of such devices & services through which certain articulations of ‘users’ as well as care relations and spaces emerged out. Funded by: FPU-UAM 2007-2011 PhD fellowship; FP7 project 2007-2010 “Ethical Frameworks for Telecare Technologies for older people at home (EFORTT)“; and Spanish National R&D programme 2008-2011 research project “Technology and attention to dependence: An analysis of the psychosocial effects of telecare’s implementation” (CSO2008-06308-C02-01/SOCI).
COLLECTIVE VENUES
-2020-ongoing: xcol. An Ethnographic Inventory (co-curator)
A digital inventory—co-curated with Adolfo Estalella (Complutense University of Madrid)—for the documentation of inventive forms of ethnographic inquiry, which seeks to intervene in current forms of anthropological practice and learning.
Its initial development was funded by the Laboratory of Experimental Visual Anthropology (LAAV) of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Castilla y León, Spain (MUSAC). PIs: Adolfo Estalella & Tomás Criado.
The project received the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) ‘Making and Doing‘ Award 2021.
-2016-ongoing: Collaboratory for ethnographic experimentation — #Colleex (founder & co-convenor, 2016-2021)
#Colleex /kɒli:ɡz/ — An EASA network that aims to open a space for debate and intervention around experimental forms of ethnographic fieldwork. It seeks to explore novel forms of knowledge production for anthropology.
-2018-ongoing: Stadtlabor for multimodal anthropology, HU Berlin (Director until end of 2022, Associate Researcher since 2023)
A research platform at the HU Berlin where anthropologists interested in contemporary urban issues explore multimedia formats of knowledge production and intervention in collaboration with other urban actors. We think it is crucial to start blurring the boundaries between practices or formats of knowledge production and those of city-making. Hence, we explore conceptual, speculative and material tools, such as games or archives, to respond to the current crises of modern urbanism.