New dates due to the corona lockdown: 

Sunday            26 April 10-12:30 

Thursday         30 April 10-12:30

Friday             15 May 10-12:30

Friday             22 May 10-12:30

Friday             29 May 10-12:30

Sunday            07 June 11-18 (hopefully)

Saturday         11 July 11-18 (hopefully)

Sunday            12 July 11-18 (hopefully)

Course outline: 

This is a practical course to experience the application of audio-visual research methods in qualitative participatory research. Students will have to develop an anthropological research project and will produce short anthropological films about their topics. Usually, we would work with protagonists for our films, and we would film people in their social day to day life, or while having social interactions – depending on the topic. 

For instance, if you would research a local football club to investigate about youngsters’ notions, practices, and emotions of their regional “belonging” or “identity” in Münsterland, you would certainly do participatory field research at such a local football club. 

This time we have to make a virtue of necessity: Due to the “Corona Lockdown” it might not be possible too soon, to do qualitative face-to-face research within settings such as a football club. Students will have to look for a topic, which goes hand in hand with “social distancing” and the lockdown situation. Ethnographic research and filmmaking could happen in a student’s own social environment. One possibility is, to look for a topic entangled to your own day to day life. An ethnographic research could be about a father, a family, or a flatmate in their social context, too. 

However, students will also be encouraged to use digital ethnographic methods to research and produce audio-visual products. We will watch some film examples and treat literature dealing with digital audio-visual ethnographies to help you, to apply digital and online methods of qualitative fieldwork and film-production. Imagine: Interviews might be held via skype, or social media interaction as such could be your anthropological research topic, for instance ‘emotions and interactions mediated via social media in the context of migration’. While you might interview a person via skype, you could look simultaneously at his/her family members’ and friends’ Facebook or Instagram accounts, even though being apart as a researcher and filmmaker. You could record your screen, or yourself in front of the screen, too, while interacting with the social actors of your research, digitally. Research participants could also send you their photos, selfies, home-movies or do video/audio diaries for you, to provide you research data. They could share the communications, videos and photos they receive from their friends and families. There are manifold possibilities!