Events by the Future Anthropologies Network (FAN)
FUTURE EVENTS
23-24 July 2025
Call for Papers: Past Tense, Future Imperfect: Temporalities as Mobilising Force
The European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) networks of NAoHH (Anthropology of History and Heritage) and FAN (Future Anthropologies Network) are inviting contributions to a two-day workshop in collaboration with the Global Heritage Lab at the University of Bonn.
This workshop will be held in a hybrid format on the 23rd and 24th of July 2025 at the University of Bonn and online.
Conceptions of past and future are mobilised in contemporary public debates on major issues such as climate change, migration, technology, the economy and democracy, as well as in the more intimate processes of belonging and identity formation. Retrospection and anticipation (Knight & Bryant 2019) are crucial aspects of human existence. The collaborative workshop will explore anthropological approaches to the study of time, its various registers and interrelations. Our exchange will focus on accessing, making sense of, and writing about temporalities and the social acts of remembrance, experience and anticipation through three focal points:
Methods: Accessing the past and the future poses similar methodological challenges and possibilities. Drawing on the diverse methodological approaches between FAN and NAoHH memberships, this session will examine creative research methods that explore how humans relate to past and future. Advancing methodological approaches to past-future studies may help shape a more responsible anthropology, critically engaged with the current sociopolitical struggles of our interlocutors.
Theory: Accessing the past and the future is tied to temporal orderings which, as studies on historicities (Hirsch & Stewart 2005) have highlighted, are far from being purely linear. We aim to devise new ways to understand the past in relation to the present and future beyond silencing (Trouillot 1995), ruptures and continuity. We will explore how diverse traces and materials from the past are maintained or marginalised in the present (Kopf 2024).
Dissemination: Reflections on theory and methods lead to critically rethinking the centrality of ethnographic writing, its modes of representation and our audiences. The Global Heritage Lab offers experimental space to explore multimodality and foster alternative forms of knowledge production (like exhibitions, film-making, and other forms of engagement). This can enable alternative approaches to think, teach and speak about temporal orderings and non-linearity as well as inform a more responsible anthropology.
The workshop is envisioned as the first ‘instalment’ of a long-term conversion on these overarching themes to foster further collaborative work among participants. From the methodology session, we plan to write a toolkit piece on ethnographic approaches to accessing the past and future for Allegra Lab’s ‘One shots’-series. From the theory session, we plan to work towards a special issue of a journal, potentially Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale. From the session on multimodality and writing (dissemination), we plan to take our discussions into a follow-up panel for EASA 2026.
We invite contributions that explore these issues in a variety of formats including audiovisual and multimodal forms of communication. The workshop is open to all, though priority will be given to members of FAN and NAoHH. To participate, please submit your 250-word abstract or an alternative format –such as video abstract, podcast excerpt or portfolio– outlining your contribution by Monday 31 March 2025 using the link below. Please make sure to indicate which of the three thematic sessions your contribution speaks to (Methods, Theory, Dissemination).
Please note that limited funding is available to contribute to participants’ accommodation and travel within Europe which will be allocated on a case-by-case basis.
If you have any questions or queries please direct them to: nazliozkan(at)ku.edu.tr or tom.bratrud(at)uib.no
PAST EVENTS
Network Meeting
24 July 2024 15:00 CEST, Barcelona
The meeting took place at the EASA2024 Conference.
2022 17th EASA Biennial Conference: Transformation, Hope and the Commons Queen's University Belfast July 26-29th
- P40 Digital Transformations and Social Life
The Nordic countries rank among the six most digitalized countries in the world, reflecting policy strategies on digitalization of strong affluent welfare states. This panel asks how digital practices are embedding social and material life in the Nordic countries today. - P146 Experimental transformations - Living labs as hopeful commons
Experiments are often designed with a view to transforming something in the world. Some kinds of experiment are more ‘worldly’ than others, engaging people in their everyday lives or accessing areas of common property, knowledge or culture. What kind of experiments are, for example, Living Labs? Do they exploit knowledge commons, appropriate hope of change, or reproduce existing notions of user-driven innovation and/or experimental science?
2022 Co-organizer of RAI Anthropology, AI and the Future of Human Society, June 6-10th
2020 16th EASA biennial conference: New anthropological horizons in and beyond Europe Lisbon and Shindig online platform July 20-24th
- P26 Futures Anthropology as Interventional Theory and Practice
Anthropology complicates futures imagined, predicted or envisaged elsewhere. This FAN panel proposed to discuss how to deal with uneasy entanglements, stakeholders, ethics, accountability and friction in an interventionist future-oriented anthropology. The panel was created by: Debora Lanzeni (Monash University), Juan Francisco Salazar (Western Sydney University), Karen Waltorp (University of Copenhagen), Sarah Pink (Monash University) - P121 Filming Futures: ethnographic film and future-making in critical contexts. (joint panel with the VANEASA)
This joint FAN and VANEASA panel brought together scholars interested in ethnographic film methods engaging with research on futures and future-making. It invited participants to show ethnographic film clips of their own and others' as part of their papers, to spark critical discussion. The panel was created by: Anna Lisa Ramella (University of Cologne). Martin Gruber (University of Bremen). Johannes Sjöberg (University of Manchester). Chair: Alexandra D'Onofrio (Keele University). - P146 When becoming the future lies at the intersection of Anthropology; Speculative Fiction and Storytelling
This panel explored collaborations between anthropologists and subaltern actors to summon forth new futures through speculative storytelling. It focused on films and performances as scenarios that frame and produce shifting affective experiences towards the future to create empowered discourses. The panel was created by: Igor Karim (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main), Sophia Thubauville (Frobenius Institute), Steffen Köhn (Freie Universität Berlin). Discussants: Karen Waltorp (University of Copenhagen), Debora Lanzeni (Monash University).
2019 Energies and Technologies Futures
Lyon, 20-21st June
A joint workshop and network meeting with the Future Anthropologies Network (FAN) and the Energy Anthropology Network (EAN)
Conveners: Nathalie Ortar (Université de Lyon), Simone Abram (Durham University), Karen Waltorp (University of Copenhagen) and Sarah Pink (Monash University). Hosted by Université de Lyon.
For over a century, predictions about the future have been dominated by technological fantasies, either with utopian or dystopian outcomes. Driven increasingly by responses to the causes and effects of climate change, popular political future imaginaries span elitist extraplanetary survivalism and back-to-the-land minimalism. Anthropologists have emphasised the social and material forms of technology, and the need to analyse and account for visions of the future and attend to socio-material relations between technologies, humans and other living beings in a shared environment. FAN explores the anthropological potential for future-oriented methodologies, while EAN generates knowledge on approaches to energetic practices of various kinds. This workshop brings these two concerns together, to generate synergies, theoretical trajectories and newly shared research agendas. Where do energy and technology futures intersect? How are human futures implicated in diverse techno-energetic visions? What alternative other human futures are possible in the current techno-energetic world than those extremes delineated above of extraplanetary survivalism and back-to-the-land minimalism? How can anthropologists account for- and intervene- and take part in forging in futures-generation? The aim is to demonstrate that two relatively new areas of anthropological research and practice can work together to consolidate an agenda for research and intervention. It seeks to both impact on the theory and methodology of the discipline and to advance an anthropological approach to energy futures in an interdisciplinary research field.
Read more on the conference website here: https://etechfutures.sciencesconf.org/
2018 15th EASA biennial conference: Staying, Moving, Settling
Stockholm, 14-17th August
- P40 Anthropology and emerging technologies
This panel examined emerging technologies and the ways in which they participate in constituting futures that cannot be predicted or necessarily imagined. We were interested in ethnographic examples from the immediate present, historical, as well as examples of technologies that can only be imagined.
The panel was convened by Sarah Pink (Monash University), Debora Lanzeni (Monash), Karen Waltorp (University of Copenhagen) - P164 Technologies, futures and imaginaries
This panel examines how technologies are bound up in how futures are imagined, narrated, experienced and predicted. For example, what are the implications of increasing uses of sensor technologies, intelligent homes, smart energy technologies, robots or algorithmic decision making for how we imagine our futures with technologies.
The panel was convened by Rachel Charlotte Smith (Aarhus University), Discussant Karen Waltorp (University of Copenhagen) and Sarah Pink (Monash University). - LAB017 Getting dirty: activism, intervention and mobilising future anthropologies
Laboratory participants explored co-creative practice as a way of envisioning anthropology's moral responsibility in a critical context in workshops led by Sarah Pink, Magda Kazubowski-Houston and Johannes Sjöberg.
The Lab was created by Johannes Sjöberg (University of Manchester), Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston (York University)
2017 FAN Network Meeting
Manchester, 2nd-3rd July
Convened by Débora Lanzeni (Monash University), Karen Waltorp (University of Copenhagen) and Andrew Irving and Johannes Sjöberg (Manchester University) as co-organizers. Hosted by the University of Manchester.
The FAN EASA annual network meeting took place from the 2-3rd of July in the vibrant city of Manchester. As every FAN gathering it consisted of both a workshop and a walking tour engaging in the city in which we find ourselves: A workshop event to talk about member’s current work, synergies, and future possibilities; and a walking tour introducing the history of Manchester, its technology, and the most relevant infrastructure of the city with the highlight a visit to the Graphene Institute.
2016 4S/EASST Conference Barcelona
In September 2016 FAN co-organized the workshop “Thinking with ethnography” along with CASTAC (Committee on the Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Computing) an official list of AAA and XCol (Experimental Collaborations Ethnography beyond participant observation). In the 4S/EASST CONFERENCE BARCELONA – 2016: Science and Technology by Other Means framework. Workshop convened by Tomás Criado (Humboldt University), Débora Lanzeni (Monash University), Nick Seaver (Tufts University) and Karen Waltorp (University of Copenhagen).
2016 14th EASA Biennial Conference Anthropological legacies and human futures
Milan, 20-23rd July
- P070 Possible/plausible/probable/preferable: concepts and techniques for realising futures
The FAN panel explores how anthropology might conceptualize, study, and intervene in futures as modes of world making. It engages with ethnography as a means of interrogating the possible, the mundane, and the speculative, asking what/how cross-disciplinary ethnographic approaches might be crafted. The panel was convened by Simone Abram (Durham University) and Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston (York University). - Lab04 World-making futures lab
This workshop will shape an agenda and anthropological World-Making practice that is critical, actively interventional World-Making anthropology. It focuses on emergence, everyday alterities, speculative futures and creative practice
Convened by Sarah Pink (Monash University), Juan Francisco Salazar (Western Sydney University), Andrew Irving (University of Manchester), Johannes Sjöberg (University of Manchester), Annette Markham (Aarhus University).
2015 FUTURES SEMINAR AND LAB – BARCELONA // Future-making Walking Lab
The Future Anthropologies Network (FAN) meeting took place from 21-23 June 2015 in Barcelona, co-funded by EASA and the IN3 (of the Open University of Catalonia) and hosted by BAU Design Centre.
Exploring Future makers and Future Archaeology across the Poble Nou-quarter, a former industrial quarter in the XIX and the XX Century, now reconverted into a living lab for the Smart City. Exploring further the ‘Alive futures’ and ‘Fictional futures’ across the Barceloneta quarter, a popular fishing district that still has an old active fishermen port surrounded by luxurious yachts, and that ends into a long beach, now a very attractive tourist spot, ending with a communal open air dinner in an abandoned ruin with no roof.
