The Human Show: Innovation through Social Science

Safa Mirror is a trans-disciplinary artist, researcher, and Tarotière, delving in the intersections of art, magick, and mysticism. Her research focuses on analyzing, deconstructing, and contextualizing Middle-Eastern mystical traditions, alongside Western esoteric practices. As a performer, she utilizes her research to decipher, translate and perform the mystical Persian poetry of Rumi, Hafez, Nasimi, and others. Additionally, as a Tarotière, she synthesizes her research and performance to engage in the transcendental art of divination, offering insights drawn from both Eastern and Western wisdom traditions. Safa’s work is presented here https://www.safamirror.com/

We are pleased to welcome Safa to this podcast capsule on Radical Imagination. Together, we explore the essence of imagination and the unique ways Safa taps into it. We dive into her relationship and practice with Tarot and Sufi poetry, uncovering how they serve both as tools for personal and collective sensemaking and as a means to uplift marginalized and vulnerable voices. In a moving story shared at the end of the episode, Safa highlights the power of dedication as means of anchoring oneself in service to a larger whole.

Ginie Servant-Miklos is an engaged environmental educator with fifteen years of experience in education practice, research, and advocacy. She currently holds an Assistant Professorship in behavioural sciences at the Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Her research and education work focuses on developing innovative pedagogies for societal impact. She developed the Experimental Pedagogics educational design framework, co-founded the Bildung Climate School with Prof. Rutger Engels, and is the author of the best-selling book, Pedagogies of Collapse: A Hopeful Education for the End of the World as We Know It. Ginie is an associate member of the Club of Rome and Senior Fellow of the Comenius Network for educational innovators in the Netherlands. She is the founder and Chair of the Board of the ⁠FairFight Foundation⁠, an organisation that provides girls and women from Zambia, Zimbabwe, and India with the mental and physical benefits of martial arts practice, as well as educational support. Ginie is a vocal activist for sustainability and gender equality, advocating for change through public engagements like TEDx talks, debates, podcasts, and other digital media outlets.

We are pleased to welcome Ginie on this podcast capsule on Radical Imagination. We explore the transformative power of imagination and experiential education in the face of societal and environmental crises. Ginie shares her journey from human rights advocacy to education, emphasizing the need for actionable dreams and imperfect solidarities to create meaningful change. She highlights the role of love, forgiveness, and defiance in education as tools for resilience and empowerment. Ginie also talks about her new book Pedagogies of Collapse. This radically honest, open-access book confronts the reality of collapse, acknowledging the allure of denial and despair while choosing a path of hope. Pedagogies of Collapse presents a compelling, fact-based argument for urgent action but avoids falling into the conventional categories of environmental discourse. The ebook version, A Hopeful Education for the End of the World as We Know It, is available as open access here: Bloomsbury Collections.

Francesco Bravin is a cultural anthropologist and the president and founding member of the Cultural Association Antropolis in Milan. He has a Bachelor's degree in Intercultural Communication at the University of Turin, a Master's degree in Anthropology at the University of Milan Bicocca and a PhD in Anthropology at the University of Genoa. He researched mainly in the field of anthropology of tourism and anthropology of food, focusing on the Cinque Terre, in Italy.

We are pleased to welcome Francesco, who will share his experience as educator on the subject of radical imagination. Francesco positions radical imagination at the core of the ethnographic method, as it requires the nurturing of similar qualities of curiosity and non judgement. He shares two educational projects where he applies radical imagination and openly discusses their challenges and opportunities. Listen to the episode to hear more about it.

Links:

www.associazioneantropolis.org

The Ethnographic Tarot Project intertwines the magic and mystery of tarot with the depth of anthropological inquiry. This initiative seeks to develop a distinctive tarot deck infused with ethnographic and anthropological themes, serving not only as a medium for reflection and divination but also as an innovative teaching tool aimed at enlightening students about the intricacies of ethnographic research. The aim is to collaboratively design a tarot deck that transcends traditional usage, becoming an educational resource that prompts students to explore and understand ethnographic research methodologies and anthropological insights. Each card will be thoughtfully re-imagined to incorporate significant anthropological themes, inviting contemplation on diversity, interconnectedness, frictions, and the politics and ethics of ethnographic practice. The Ethnographic Tarot Project is led by Priyanka Borpujari, Dr Fiona Murphy, and Dr Ana Ivasiuc.

We are pleased to welcome the team behind The Ethnographic Tarot Project: The Arcana of Inquiry who will discuss the project's intentions, its origins, and its future direction. They will explore how tarot complements the ethnographic practice and its potential to serve as a versatile educational resource for research, supervision, and writing. More broadly, they examine how this empowering practice can shift perspectives, unlock creative potential, and deepen reflection for practitioners. Finally, they will share their thoughts on what is needed to foster more radical imagination within the neoliberal academic space. Listen to the episode to hear more about it.

We have set one of the project’s tarot cards as a visual for this podcast episode. The Ethnographic Tower card within the tarot deck serves as a powerful metaphor for the tumultuous yet transformative process inherent in anthropological work. This card encapsulates the themes of upheaval, deconstruction, and the necessity for renewal, making it an exceptional teaching tool for understanding the dynamics of ethnographic inquiry.

Copyright (for the artwork): Priyanka Borpujari.  

Links: https://www.scribd.com/document/760415134/Ethnographic-Tarot-Project (contribution deadline extended to September 20th 2024)

Dace Dzenovskais Associate Professor in the Anthropology of Migration at the University of Oxford and the Principal Investigator of the EMPTINESS project. She holds doctoral and master’s degrees in Social Cultural Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, as well as an interdisciplinary master’s degree in Humanities and Social Thought from New York University.

We are happy to have Dace with us speaking to her background and her experience and thoughts on isolation. She shares about her current research on emptiness and links it to isolation. Through fieldwork stories, she further details the condition of emptiness of which isolation is an element and explores what happens when this condition is seen as a site of opportunities. Lastly, she talks about what excites her the most about coming to the conference as well as her advice to those considering to attend. Listen to the episode to hear more about it.

Heli Rantavuo is an applied cultural studies and social sciences researcher based in Helsinki. For the past 15 years, she has worked in the technology industry in London, Stockholm and Helsinki, contributing and leading research in product and market strategy at Spotify, eBay, Microsoft and Nokia. Before working in the industry, she was a researcher at Aalto University, School of Media and Art where she graduated as Doctor of Arts, and at the Center of Welfare and Health in Finland. Heli is a founding member of the Human Sciences in Strategy association in Finland which brings together applied anthropologists and other human scientists who practise their craft outside academia.

We are happy to have Heli with us speaking to her background and her experience and thoughts on isolation. She shares some of the lenses she is considering to use to explore the topic of isolation, such as temporality, embodiment and capitalism.  Lastly, she talks about what excites her the most about coming to the conference as well as her advice to those considering to attend.  Listen to the episode to hear more about it.

We are happy to have Rafram with us speaking to his background as a visual artist and his experience and thoughts on isolation. In 2010, Rafram found himself imprisoned

in Lybia. He spent 6 months by himself in an extreme isolation unit, not knowing whether he would live or die. In this conversation he explores questions such as: 

What does it mean to be free?

What is the value of being with oneself?

What do inner conversations reveal and what effects can one experience after such a transformative event?

Rafram also speaks to the power of the artistic lens and how it can help cultivate self-inquiry and drive everyday choices from a space of personal freedom. 

Lastly, as a speaker of Why the world needs Anthropologists, The Power of Isolation, he

shares his thoughts on anthropology as well as his advice and thoughts to those considering attending the conference. Listen to the episode to hear more about it.

Erin B. Taylor & Melanie T. Uy: Anthropologists & Authors of Better Research, Better Design: How to Align Teams and Build a Human-Centric Company Culture.

Dr. Erin B. Taylor has a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Sydney and is the founder of Finthropology, a company specializing in insights into people’s financial behaviour. She specializes in how people’s financial behaviour is changing along with innovation in financial services, and has carried out ethnographic research in the Caribbean, Africa and Europe. Erin is especially interested in how culture and group belonging influence people’s actions and decisions.

Dr. Melanie T. Uy is a lifelong learner and known for unexpected questions. She is a ritual specialist focusing on the practices of social connection and disconnection and its impact on work and workplaces. Her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam researched how social detachment was essential to the work of migration brokers in China. She currently works as a user experience researcher in the Netherlands and previously ran consumer studies for the retail and healthcare market in the Philippines.

We are excited to have Erin and Melanie with us to share this joint research project. This project is intended as a toolkit for researchers and their colleagues to help them position the value of their work and bring it forth to a desired organizational level. We ask the authors how did the idea for the project come about? How did they organize the research and what were the unexpected insights that emerged from it? Melanie and Erin ask back whether they were right or wrong with their conclusions. Listen to the episode and feel free to reach out to the authors to share your feedback.

Mentioned in Podcast:

Better Research,

Better Design: How to Align Teams and Build a Human-Centric Company Culture by Erin B. Taylor and Melany.T.Uy

Active8 Planet

American Anthropological Association (AAA)

Applied

Anthropology Network (AAN)

EPIC 2022

Finthropology

Gillian

Tett

Moving Matters: People, Goods, Power and Ideas, University of Amsterdam

Response-ability Summit

The National Association for the Practice of Anthropology

UXInsight 

Social Media:

Erin: LinkedIn

Melanie: LinkedIn; @anthrobuzz on Medium and Goodreads

Amina Alaoui Soulimani is a doctoral research fellow at HUMA, the Institute for Humanities in Africa. Amina holds an MSc in Social Anthropology from the London School of Economics. Her current anthropological doctoral work at the University of Cape Town focuses on the ethics of care, AI, and the future hospital in Morocco.

Gabriela Cabaña is a Ph.D. candidate at the LSE anthropology department. Gabriela is a transdisciplinary scholar originally trained in Sociology in Chile but also draws from political ecology and feminist theoretical perspectives. She is interested in the interplay between energy, bureaucracy, value, and degrowth. Her ethnographic work focuses on energy transitions in southern Chile.

Gabriela is part of Centro de Análisis Socioambiental (Centre of Social-Environmental Analysis); Red Chilena de Ingreso Básico (Chilean network of Basic Income) and the Basic Income Earth Network. 

This is a special episode, a Love letter to David Graeber. Gabriela was taught a course by David at LSE, while Amina got to know him as a thesis supervisor there. Through the lived experiences of Amina and Gabriela, we are exploring David's contribution and

legacy in action. What has stuck with them from the conversations they had with David and the academic interactions he created? Gabriela and Amina share beautiful examples from their individual encounters with David as an academic lead and a fellow human. Finally, we ask how to make someone like David possible in academia again and more?

At the end, they share their favourite readings. Listen to this conversation about a personal anthropological touch and the inheritance of David Graeber.

Social Media:

Amina: https://twitter.com/AminaSoulimani

Gabriela: https://twitter.com/gabi_cabana

Mentioned in Podcast

Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology by David Graeber

The Utopia of Rules by David

Graeber

David Prendergast is Head of the Department of Anthropology and Professor of Science, Technology and Society at Maynooth University in Ireland. Previously David worked at Intel where he was a principal investigator at the ‘Technology Research for Independent Living Centre’ and co-founder of the ‘Intel Institute for Sustainable Connected Cities’. He has also served as Visiting Professor of Healthcare Innovation at the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Trinity College Dublin. He is currently working on a book with colleagues Jamie Saris and Katja Seidel about the lives of 94 older adults in ten locations across Europe during the Covid-19 pandemic.

We are happy to have David with us speaking to his background and current work at the intersection of academia and the applied sector. He shares his path into anthropology and his multiple research projects as well as gives insight into what motivated his choices to leave spaces of engagement or to take on new opportunities. As speaker at the Why the world needs Anthropologists conference

he shares how he will be contributing to the themes as well as his advice and thoughts to those considering to attend.

Listen to the episode to hear more about it.

Mentioned:

Why the World needs Anthropologists, Re|Generation,

September 2022 https://www.applied-anthropology.com/session/regeneration-talk-iv-2/

Social Media:

LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidprendergast/