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, reach new audiences, and activate latent potentials for a broad range of actions in the world.
This multimodal turn has resulted in a proliferation of more-than-textual forms that are hard to classify and are at odds with institutionalised modes of disciplinary knowledge production. Despite the important openings created by multimodal works, they are rarely seen in academia as of equal value when compared to articles and monographs. This is in part because peers, reviewers and supervisors are confronted with a complex conundrum: What criteria should be employed to evaluate such multimodal singularities?
In this two-day workshop – that will take place on March 12th at the University of Barcelona and March 13th at the Open University of Catalonia –, we will introduce the Multimodal Appreciation kit developed by a team of anthropologists at the Humboldt-University of Berlin in response to these conundrums (Judith Albrecht, Tomás Criado, Ignacio Farías, Andrew Gilbert and Carla J. Maier).
This kit provides a set of practical exercises and a framework for valuing and assessing multimodal works. It recognizes their unique capacity to weave together and activate diverse media forms, collaborative practices, and public engagement while expanding the traditional boundaries of ethnographic knowledge production.
Organised by CareNet (UOC) in collaboration with Friccions: Grup d’Antropologia de l’Encontre (ICA) and the Department of Social Anthropology (University of Barcelona), with support from the Volkswagen Stiftung and the Humboldt-University of Berlin’s Stadtlabor for Multimodal Anthropology.
URL: https://symposium.uoc.edu/149222/detail/workshop-multimodal-ethnography-days-march-12-13-2026.html
