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This course unfolds the issues involved in understanding society via multimodal and audiovisual ethnographic research methods.  Students will learn a set of innovative research skills useful to gather and present rich data towards the objective of fostering policy advancement.

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As contemporary ethnographers, what sets of data do we produce during fieldwork? How can different data help policymakers understand specific issues? How can we adjust our medium to engage the people we study and guarantee our methods are inclusive of all stakeholders across the larger society? What have been the trends and practices researchers have made use of in the last few years? When we produce our findings via visual or sound forms, such as a documentary, what are the research implications? How have multimodal ethnographers managed to reach a larger audience and do they have an impact on society?

Scholars of Social Sciences and Humanities have been practising research methods that deepen the observation techniques and the understanding of people. By allowing creative research methods, we can achieve people's engagement, as well as a strong aesthetic effect that impacts citizens and policy makers emotionally. In this way, we humanise mega trends, showing the people's lives behind the graphs. The course invite participants to blend different methods together into an interactive ethnographic output. The skills acquired through the course can be applied by students in their careers in policy research, in academic institutions, in the commercial sector and in the creative field.

 

The course will introduce and explain the following aspects among others: 

- Visual methods for data and fieldwork analysis
- Performative techniques to engage and represent social groups and communities 
- Representing ethnographic knowledge via data and online media, making us of the tools of web 2.0 

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