happenings

Alexander Robinson (USC) and Julien Emile-Geay (USC)

What makes a model a tool or object of ethnographic research? What can models allow us to envision or prevent us from seeing? What are the limitations and possibilities of models in ethnographic projects?

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A train platform with a passing train.

Works in Progress Series: Infrastructural Aporia 2026

Featuring

Marcos Lopes Campos (Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning, CEBRAP) and Joanne Nucho (Anthropology, USC)
Image with a blue filter of Paige West face to face with an interlocutor

Breakfast + Conversation with Paige West 2026

Featuring

Paige West (Columbia University)
Image of an old painting of an island, ships with sails, and clouds in the background. Cursive text underneath the image says

From Island to Island to Island 2026

Featuring

Deborah Thomas (University of Pennsylvania)
View from an elevated concrete highway over a watery landscape with trees emerging out of calm water. Thick clouds hang overhead.

Property + Materiality 2025

Featuring

LaShandra Sullivan (Northwestern University), Kregg Hetherington (Concordia University), Jamie Cross (University of Glasgow), and Andrea Ballestero (USC)
A table with neat stacks of black tote bags with the Ethnography Studio logo.

Open House 2025

Featuring

The Ethnography Studio Community
An abstract artwork with bright primary and secondary colors, representing a man in a hat holding tools amid a mosaic background depicting human figures and other shapes.

Publication Launch for “The Future of Facts in Latin America” 2025

Featuring

Future of Facts Working Group
A pixelated blue-tone image of a mountain landscape.

Missing, Underappreciated, Found Part II 2025

Featuring

Colleagues from Goethe University Frankfurt
A black-and-white photo of ripples on the surface of water.

Interference: Salon 2025

Featuring

Meghanne Barker (University College London), Jenny Chio (USC), and Juno Salazar Parreñas (Cornell University)
A black and white sketch of people working together to hold up a tower of stuffed animals, against a bright yellow background and teal floor.

Throw Your Voice 2025

Featuring

Meghanne Barker (University College London)
A pixelated, rainbow background.

Beautiful Mystery 2025

Featuring

Danilyn Rutherford (Wenner-Gren)
An abstract rendering of what looks like wavy lines of paint, extending in nesting circles; it evokes electricity and energy.

Speculative Ethnography 2025

Featuring

Steven Gonzalez (Goethe University Frankfurt)
Part of the book cover for In the Land of the Unreal: Virtual and Other Realities in Los Angeles. Against a background of pink palms, a person in blue and purple tones looks up through a VR headset.

Place: Real, Unreal, Hyperreal 2025

Featuring

Lisa Messeri (Yale University)
A screenshot of a zoom meeting, with eight people in a grid. Some smile, some look focused.

Peer-to-Peer Mentoring Roundtable 2025

Featuring

Katie Ulrich (USC, Harvard University), Melanie Ford (Rice University), and Yesmar Oyarzun (Brandeis University)
A pixelated blue-tone image of a mountain landscape.

Missing, Underappreciated, Found 2024

Featuring

Colleagues from Goethe University Frankfurt and UCLA
Photo of a barge on the ocean.

Alchemies of a Saltwater Frontier 2024

Featuring

Jeffrey Kahn (University of California Davis)
Abstract image of white specks against a black background, dispersed in a random, organic-like way.

Roundtable: Shifting Matter(s), Slippery Maps 2024

Featuring

Shannon Mattern (University of Pennsylvania) and Annette Kim (USC)
Abstract image of white specks against a black background, dispersed in a random, organic-like way.

Shifting Matter(s), Slippery Maps: Salon 2024

Featuring

Shannon Mattern (University of Pennsylvania)
A person holds a paper zine. Loose paper, cardboard, glue bottles, and scissors are strewn about the table in front of them.

Book Making with Cardboard House Press 2024

Featuring

Ryan Greene, MaryHope Lee, and Claudia Nunez de Ibieta (Cardboard House Press)
Photo of a zine called Pit Stop. Text is arranged in multiple directions around various kinds of images.

Zines and Porosities at AAA 2023

Featuring

Katie Ulrich (USC and Rice University), Rachel Howard (University of Chicago), and the EMERGE Collective
Poster for Forensic Architecture event. The background image is a satellite map with small geometric graphics sprinkled over it.

Ghastly Materialities 2023

Featuring

Sergio Beltran (UNAM), Paula Marujo (University of São Paulo, Autonoma Research Agency), Hannah Mezsaros Martin (USC), Oscar Pedraza (USC), Eduardo Romero (USC), Jason De León (UCLA), Ifor Duncan (Goldsmiths)
A person writes on a tall whiteboard.

EMERGE Protocol Workshop 2023

Featuring

EMERGE Collective
Pixelated rocks floating in a light yellow background.

Porosities: Ethnographic Salon 2023

Featuring

Eleana Kim (UC Irvine), Gabriela Soto Laveaga (Harvard University), and Teresa Montoya (University of Chicago)
Poster for “How to Feed the World” talk. It includes a headshot of a smiling person with long brown hair.

How to Feed the World 2023

Featuring

Gabriela Soto Laveaga (Harvard University)
Shallow water ripples against concrete embankments, with a couple small trees in the pebbly middle. A large warehouse is in the background.

LA River Tour 2023

Featuring

Friends of the LA River
Abstract art consisting of multi-colored overlapping circles, forming one large circle.

Experimenting with Ethnography 2022

Featuring

Marilyn Strathern (University of Cambridge), Dawn Nafus (Intel), Nikhil Anand (University of Pennsylvania), Patricia Alvarez Astacio (Brandeis University), and Tone Walford (University College London)
Graphic that says “Ethnographic Salon 2021”

Refusing Poetic Restraint: Ethnographic Salon 2021

Featuring

Nomi Stone (UT Dallas), Duana Fullwiley (Stanford), and Maura Finkelstein (Muhlenberg College)
The word “graphic” in white against a black background, with echoes of it stacked above.

Graphic: Ethnographic Salon 2020

Featuring

Dr. Coleman Nye (Simon Fraser University), Dr. Juan Llamas Rodriguez (UT Dallas), Dr. Jeffrey Himpele (Princeton University)
A pixelated black-and-white image of a person staggering through a smoldering forest.

Experiments in Decolonization 2019

Featuring

Tim Neale (Deakin University)
Graphic of white lines and dots in the shape of something that evokes a sound wave against a black background.

Sonic: Ethnographic Salon 2019

Featuring

Stefan Helmreich (MIT) and Marina Peterson (UT Austin)
A white sketch of a goat against a black background.

Being the Rogue Ethnographic Goat 2018

Featuring

Paige West (Columbia University)
Graphic of a white triangle with green, pink, and blue edges on a black background.

Optics: Ethnographic Salon 2018

Featuring

Kristina Lyons (UC Santa Cruz), Dana Powell (Appalachian State University), and Joe Masco (University of Chicago)
The text “Conversions” with five small white dots/lines, the first starting as a dot and each becoming more stretched out until the last is a line, against a black background.

Conversions 2017

Featuring

Readings by Gaston Gordillo and Tim Ingold
Image of an art installation featuring black string in a tangle in the middle of a room and in straight lines along the room’s walls and ceiling.

Sensorial Excess 2017

Featuring

Dawn Nafus (Intel) and Patricia Alvarez Astacio (Brandeis)
Pixelated image of dark figures and shadows.

Fact: Ethnographic Salon 2017

Featuring

Danilyn Rutherford (Wenner Gren)
Poster for Intervention as Collaboration workshop. It features a headshot of a person with short straight dark hair softly smiling while looking past the camera.

Intervention as Collaboration 2016

Featuring

Brit Ross Winthereik (IT Copenhagen)
A photo of an old TV box displays an image of someone standing in an art gallery. Barely perceptible in the screen is the reflection of the person who took the photo.

Micro-Installations 2016

Featuring

Students of the Fall 2016 Ethnography Studio class
Graphic of green, purple, and blue silhouettes of people in various poses, overlapping on a black background.

Ethnographic Salon 2016

Featuring

Student PechaKucha presentations
Image of a person in motion, perhaps dancing.

Ethnographies that Move 2015

Featuring

Kim Fortun (RPI)
A screenshot of a tweet featuring an image of pen sketches on lined paper.

#ESIFRice: An Experiment in Linked Thinking 2015

Featuring

Dolma Roder (Royal Thimphu College), Zoe Wool (Rice University), Cymene Howe (Rice University), Emily Brooks (UC Irvine), Rachel Douglas-Jones (IT Copenhagen), Katelyn Parady (Arizona State University), Gabriela Arguedas (Universidad de Costa Rica), Valerie Olson (UC Irvine), Paige West (Columbia University), Simone Popperl (UC Irvine)
Nested doorways extending seemingly forever.

Talking about Ethnographic Sparks 2015

Featuring

Hugh Raffles (The New School)