PossumLab is a space to explore creative ethnographic work. In this seminar, we read a comic and use it as a way to explore anthropological concepts. Stay tuned for more details about the specific comic and themes that we will explore in this session. A PDF of the comic will be linked to this page, and we encourage attendees to read at least the first few chapters before the event.

V. Chitra is a lecturer in anthropology at the ANU School of Archaeology and Anthropology. Her research sits at the intersection of environmental studies and science technology studies. Chitra is interested in thinking using ethnographic research to draw differently, i.e., in ways that respond to the ongoing climate crisis. She has conducted research in India and Singapore. Her first book, Drawing Coastlines: Climate Anxieties and the Visual Reinvention of Mumbai's Shore, moves between comics and text to show how drawings and drawing practices create coasts whose futures are foreshortened and given over to development.

Adam Sargent is a lecturer of anthropology in the ANU School of Archaeology and Anthropology.  His research brings together economic and linguistic anthropology with a regional focus on India.  He is currently developing a manuscript on the semiotics of exposure and labour in the Indian construction industry.  He is also conducting fieldwork on the emergence of algorithmic credit-scoring systems as a means of extending credit and debt relations to unbanked and underbanked populations in India.  His work has been featured in Anthropological Quarterly, Social Studies of Science, Anthropology of Work Review, and New Media and Society. 
 

In-person: Room TBC

Zoom link: https://anu.zoom.us/j/82431454032?pwd=owA39nWqTYm2TGOcC0sWa9bEDVangD.1