As part of the Research Methods Workshops course for the Architecture and Landscape students at the University of Manchester, I led a lecture about using graphic anthropology in ethnographic research. In preparing the lecture I drew on my waste incinerator ethnography research, my previous presentations on the topic and the key authors: Andrew Causey, Chitra Venkataramani, and Josh Reno, amongst others.
The lecture was broken up into interactive parts: discussion of Causey’s Drawn to See and a comics drawing exercise: the students were divided into pairs, where each person told a 3 minute story and then drew their collocutor’s story as a comics of three panels. The exercise, inspired by one I have previously taken part in during an anthropology class, took a little longer than previewed: for for the next time, 2 minutes telling and 10 minutes presenting would be a more suitable ratio.
Between the University’s Architecture and Anthropology schools, a few of us are currently setting up a graphic anthropology group for running events, master-classes and peer support sessions.
Some comics sketched during the activity break:
Bibliography:
Causey, A. (2017). Drawn to see : drawing as an ethnographic method. North York, Ontario, Canada, University of Toronto Press.
Reno, J. (2016). Waste Away : Working and Living with a North American Landfill. Berkeley, CA, University of California Press.
Venkataramani, C. (2021). “Waste’s translations.” American Ethnologist 48(4): 337-356.
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