The Stadtlabor for Multimodal Anthropology of the Institute of European Ethnology, HU Berlin invites HU students at all levels – BA, MA and PhD – to apply for up to 750€ funding for multimodal projects addressing urban spaces, transformations and/or other matters.
In recent years there has been a proliferation of experiments, devices and platforms of multimodal ethnographic practices involving not just different media, but also – and most importantly – a multiplicity of epistemic, affective and political modes for engaging with urban actors. Many of these projects involve participatory, experimental, and collaborative formats that aim to unsettle writing and reading as privileged and exclusive modes of knowledge production and circulation. They include games, podcasts, sound installations, interactive websites, comics, public exhibits, walking itineraries, film, photography, and other research artefacts.
With this Multimodal Project Fund – planned to be awarded every semester, see below for more information– we aim to foster urban ethnographic projects featuring more-than-textual research or public engagement and intervention formats, in a wide variety of products and in diverse genres of expression. Selected projects will contribute to expand and reflect upon multimodal strategies for ethnographic work on urban arenas, paying attention to how particular devices might enable or hinder particular descriptions and conceptual understandings of current urban conditions.
Who can apply
The Fund is open for individuals and inter- and transdisciplinary groups. For group applications, it is enough if one member is a student, at any level (BA, MA and PhD), registered in the moment of applying at the HU Berlin.
What can be funded?
The funding of up to 750€ covers the costs of developing the project (employment of the fund recipients is, however, not a possibility).
All expenses need to be documented with original invoices. The refunding will occur after the project has been implemented.
What do we value?
We expect the proposals to:
1) engage with multimodal ethnography
– exploring multimodality not just as a mode of representation, but as a mode of ethnographic knowledge production in itself (a way of approaching concept-work, analysis or fieldwork)
– making explicit the reasons and showing a clear outline of a given more-than-textual knowledge production process
– clarifying the connections between research topics/questions and the chosen multimodal approach (that is, why a given multimodal approach is relevant for a particular mode of inquiry; what are the conceptual capabilities or approaches to fieldwork research that a specific modality is expected to afford)
2) discuss their contribution to urban research
– outlining and providing details on how a multimodal approach would enable problem-making or an empirical approach to a relevant urban research question (even if related with artistic explorations or activism)
– contributing in a particular way to ongoing experimentation or approaches of multimodal ethnography
What and when should you deliver?
It is expected that the awarded project would be ready to contribute with a publication or present results in a public event hosted by the Stadtlabor for Multimodal Anthropology six months after the award.
Deadlines
WiSe 22-23
Launch of the call: January 17, 2023
Deadline for application: February 28, 2023 | Application form
Notification of Results: March 20, 2023
Awardees: Jonas Möller and Jann Mausen, with “Konatminiert werden. Forschen in den Ruinen der Reinheit”.
SoSe 22
Deadline for application: July 31, 2022
Notification of Results: September 15, 2022
Awardees: Maximilian Apel, Christine Maicher, Doreen Sauer, with “Racoon City Berlin” website.
WiSe 21-22
Deadline for application: November 30, 2021
Notification of Results: December 17, 2021
Awardee: Imad Gebrayel, with “Sonnenallee – The Podcast” (part of the PhD project Shar’e al-‘Arab: Negotiations of Arab-Muslim Identifications in Sonnenallee)
