November 13, 2026 
University of Southern California

Caroline Schuster (Australian National University)

The Ethnography Studio invites you to a workshop on graphic ethnography with Dr. Carly Schuster. This workshop will take place in person at USC in Taper Hall, Room 309K on November 13th from 10am-1pm. Lunch will be served. We will explore comics and sequential art as a medium for communicating research and learn how to do it yourself—no drawing skills required!

Workshop Description: Graphic ethnography is on the rise! In this hands-on workshop we will explore how anthropological research has been presented in comic books, both historically and in contemporary writing. Participants will engage with sample materials from a range of styles and comics traditions. Then, we will explore the creation of sequential art as a tool and medium for communicating research. Can sequential art be used to convey the value of ethnographic insights? What are the practical and theoretical possibilities of this form, especially in comparison to traditional research outputs and the conventions of ethnographic writing?

To apply: Please complete this form by October 25st.

What to expect?: In the first 60 minutes we will discuss graphic ethnography as a genre and mode of anthropological analysis. Then we will read the script for a comic (The Recruits) together, and we’ll work on writing our own scripts for a 1-page comic. To prepare for this exercise, it would be helpful to have thought about a scene, key characters, setting, and [this is crucial!] dialogue, that you want to build your script around. Finally, we’ll work on some drawing exercises to consider how sequential art can organize time through space (on a page), how to communicate the ethnographer’s “point of view” in comics storytelling, and how to balance text and visuals.

Caroline E. Schuster is an economic anthropologist with a research interest in the gendered and gendering effects of financialisation, and new forms of risk emerging from the climate crisis. She received her PhD in socio-cultural anthropology at the University of Chicago in 2012 after having pursued an interdisciplinary development studies degree from Stanford University. Following a post-doc at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies (2012-2014), Caroline joined the faculty of the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University. Her research appears in major anthropology journals, as well as interdisciplinary cultural economy, science studies, and development studies journals. Her most recent book, Forecasts: a story of weather and finance at the edge of disaster is a graphic ethnography (i.e. comic) published in the innovative ethnoGRAPHIC series at University of Toronto Press (2023). Forecasts was co-authored with Paraguayan artists Enrique Bernardou and David Bueno, and was awarded the 2026 Kate Browne Award for Creativity in Research. With Bernardou and Bueno, Schuster co-founded the Asunción-based comics studio CómicsClub.