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).

Submit abstract

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

Thursday 5 December 2024

Informal Meeting

The informal online meeting (our first as NAoHH) took place on December 5, 2024. Our new co-convenor Veronica Ferreri (Ca' Foscari University) shared her research with a short presentation and plenty of time for discussion.

Thursday 7 November 2024

Online book launch/roundtable

Monuments Decolonized Susan Slyomovic (UCLA) in conversation with Sultan Doughan (Goldsmiths) and Dan Hicks (Oxford)

Online roundtable and launch for Susan Slyomovics (UCLA) Monuments Decolonized: Algeria's French Colonial Heritage - in conversation with Sultan Doughan (Goldsmiths) and Dan Hicks (Oxford).

More book information: Monuments Decolonized: Algeria's French Colonial Heritage

Network Meetings

24 July 2024, EASA2024
6 August 2024, Online

Friday 17 May
15.00-16.00

Embodying the Gods: The Re-enactment of Myth in a Scottish Pagan Festival

Abstract:
Storytelling is an important element of Pagan rituals because it allows the participants to reconnect, bodily, emotionally and spirituality, with past and present. In this presentation, I draw on ethnographic data collected during the Samhuinn Festival taking place on 31st October in Edinburgh. This event marks the changing of seasons, gathers thousands of people, and brings ancient Celtic stories alive with a modern twist. The festival revolves around the staging and re-enactment of the epic battle between two characters, the Summer and Winter Kings. Both are accompanied by their respective crews of otherworldly creatures inspired in local folklore: fairies, beasties, and morrigans, among others. The re-enactment of this myth becomes a multi-sensory experience for both the participants and the audience, highlighting the role of storytelling in the elaboration of individual and collective spiritual experiences.

Friday 14 June
(15.00-17.00 GMT, 16.00-18.00 CET)

This workshop between EASA networks EnviroAnt and NAoHH explores collaborative possibilities of conversations between our research questions and approaches. Our guiding theme is temporalities. We consider the differences and synergies on how we engage with imaginaries and intersections of the present, the future and the past? What do we need to consider in our relations to the present and future as well as the past?

Friday 12 April

This online roundtable with Jeremy Walton (University of Rijeka) and David Henig (University of Utrecht) and Zeynep Oğuz Kursar (Harvard, University of Zagreb) was the second in our NAoHH 2024 seminar series. The NAoHH series aims to gather anthropologists (and beyond) to present and discuss their takes on history in different ways. This event addressed "Conversations" and explored transdisciplinary dimensions of historical anthropological work between:

• Jeremy Walton (University of Rijeka)
• David Henig (University of Utrecht)
• Zeynep Oğuz Kursar (Harvard, University of Zagreb)

Friday 26 January

The Politics of Scale: Perspectives from and on Anthropology of History

Pamela Ballinger (University of Michigan), Dominique Santos (Rhodes University), Georgeta Stoica and Marta Gentilucci (CUFR Mayotte) and Alice Elliot (Goldsmiths)

The Roundtable will unfold in a dialogical, research-experiential, and collaborative manner. Four scholars are invited to open up the space of exchange by sharing research experiences and ethnographic examples on how and why they scale history in particular ways; what this opens up and limits; and which potential pitfalls emerge.

Friday 8 December

Informal online meeting

Network member Malte Gembus will share some research thoughts.
Yetu - Nanik - Satajtoj: Young People and their engagement with Past, Present and Future in the Guatemalan diaspora.

Thursday 30 November

Book launch and Roundtable conversation (online) Weaving Europe, Crafting the Museum

Magdalena Buchczyk (Magdalena Buchczyk (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) in conversation with Aimee Joyce (St Andrews) and Magdalena Zych (Seweryn Udziela Ethnographic Museum, Kraków)

Friday 13 October
15.00-16.30 BST

Sultan Doughan (Goldsmiths) shares her research: 'What's secularism got to do with it? On history as a political resource of the present'.

Informal presentation (10-15 minutes) with plenty time for questions and discussions, as well as catching up and sharing network news and plans.

Friday 26 May 2023
16.00-18.00 BST

Online Book Launch. Monumental Names

Friday May 19 2023
15.00 GMT/London

Informal meeting

Our regular informal meetings offer space to be sociable, as well as discuss ideas about future plans and network projects.

The speakers will be the network founders, Giovanna Parmigiani (Harvard Divinity School) and Helen Cornish (Goldsmiths) - who will share some aspects of their research on magic, witchcraft, histories and historicities.

Thursday 11 May
15.00-17.30 BST

NAoHH workshop. What makes history more public than anthropology?

In What Makes History More Public than Anthropology? NAoHH, the EASA Network for an Anthropology of History and Heritage explores intersections between an anthropology of history, public anthropologies and public histories.
This first of three workshops (2023-2024) asks

• What might it mean to consider an anthropology of history in the public domain? Is this an engaged or applied model?
• Public histories often favour narratological approaches to the past, does an anthropological approach to public history challenge theoretical conventions?
• Do anthropological theories and ethnographic methods undermine public histories? Or do these offer insights when navigating difficult or contested accounts?
  Organised by Helen Cornish (Goldsmiths) & Giovanna Parmigiani (Harvard) NAoHH Convenors

Contributors (abstracts available through link)

• Carol Balthazar (UCL)
• Dominic Bryan (Queens University Belfast)
• Julia Binter (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin)
• Galina Oustinova-Stjepanovic (Glasgow)
• Elaine McIlwraith (Western University, Canada)

Friday March 24 2023
15.00 GMT/London

Informal meeting

This informal meeting will give us time to discuss any thoughts or ideas about future plans and network projects.
Also, Dom Bryan (Queens University, Belfast) will share some thoughts about his research.

Friday 27 January 2023
15.00 GMT
Informal meeting with speakers on zoom (invite by NAoHH Mailing List)

• Katarzyna Puzon (Institue for Advanced Studies global dis:connect, Ludwig Maximillian University of Munich): 'Sound Archives and Their Entangled Legacies'
• Nina ter Laan (University of Cologne, University of Siegen): 'Re-membering the Rif through Sound and Song: (Post)-colonial pasts and musical practices among Riffians between Morocco and The Netherlands'