*CFP* "FEELING DIGITAL AND REIMAGINING FIELDWORK DURING COVID TIME", U21 RESEARCHER RESILIENCE ONLINE WORKSHOP

The Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (HKIHSS), and the HKU Anthropology Network and Department of Sociology are pleased to announce a call for participation in a workshop funded by Universitas 21 (U21). We will select 20 participants to form 5 groups, each conducting a set of experimental and auto-ethnographic fieldwork by using digital devices to perform critical “body-theatres”. These “body-theatres” will be designed and coordinated by our coach Ms. Anna Cruz Benavidez (Anthropologist and Theater Director at the OTRO CUERPO, a Theater and Research company). The participants will record the experimental fieldwork (less than one hour) and write ethnographic diaries to reflect upon these experiences. These recordings and diaries will be shared within a group and discussed by outstanding scholars in anthropology, sociology, media, and performance studies. The workshop’s outputs will be co-authored articles and other creative works based on the recordings and ethnographic diaries, followed by the discussants’ commentaries. We aim to combine these works into a creative edited volume.

Through the experimental fieldworks, we will form a deeper understanding of body politics and the critical phenomenology of living a “forced” digital life amidst the pandemic. We ask critical questions about our daily engagement with the “digital” and respond to the questions through artistic and philosophical bodily reflections. We seek to advance digital ethnography not simply as “fieldwork online” but as a broad system of intersubjective connections beyond a narrow boundary of empiricism.

We are honoured to have Prof. Jarrett Zigon (William & Linda Porterfield Chair in Biomedical Ethics and Professor of Anthropology, Founding Director of the Center for Data Ethics and Justice, University of Virginia) delivering a keynote speech for this workshop. And we are happy to have outstanding scholars from Austria, Chile, Denmark, Hong Kong and the United States joining to form a truly international group of discussants.

Interested persons can apply by sending an email with a personal statement (maximum 800 words) with a short bio (maximum 250 words) and your publication records (both academic and non-academic) if there is any to feelingdigitalworkshop@gmail.com by Feb. 28, 2021. The workshop dates and times are May 11 and 12 (20:00-24:00 GMT+8 Hong Kong). All are welcome to apply! More detailed information about the workshop can be found through the website.