Speaker: Josepha (Joshka) Wessels
In person at Niagara C0826 and on Zoom (link).
Abstract:
This Brown Bag seminar reflects on the participatory use of immersive 360° video and collaborative immersive storytelling. Joshka spent the months November and December at the Emerging Technology Lab at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia and will report back on her research stay there. Joshka has worked over the past 6 years for the Swedish funded research environment Refugee Migration and Cities: Social Institutions, Political Governance and Integration in Jordan, Turkey and Sweden (SIPGI). Conducting fieldwork in secondary cities in three different countries, Joshka combined methods of re-enactment and participatory theatre with Syrians in participatory workshops, which were organized in-situ. Participants produced their own 360°video immersive stories around themes of everyday encounters, shared identities, and memories. The 360°video technology enabled participants to critically analyse their own realities and experiences of mobility, the mundane, social encounters and share their human experience in a non-verbal immersive way co-creating embodied knowledge. This seminar reflects on what the emergence of immersive media means for the development of sensory anthropology as a subfield and how it can improve qualitative research and inquiry in urban environments.
Short bio:
Josepha Wessels (PhD) is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and Associate Professor in Media and Communication Studies at the School of Arts and Communication (K3) at Malmö University. She has a background in Visual Anthropology and Human Geography. Her interests are in film, emerging technology and immersive storytelling, communication and media for social and revolutionary change, citizen media and social movements and Participatory Action Research (PAR). She has specific expertise in the Arab world, traditional water management, environmental peacebuilding, human ecology, forced migration and postmigration.
This seminar is part of the IUR Brown Bag Seminar Series. Bring your lunch! If you have any questions, please contact Defne Kadioglu and Julie Goodrich.