Members
Kregg Hetherington, PhD
Concordia University Research Chair in Environmental Ethnography
Dr. Kregg Hetherington is director and co-founder of the Ethnography Lab, which promotes methodological experimentation around ethnographic practice. He is also the lead investigator for a network of five similar labs in the production of EMERGE: a matrix for Ethnographic Collaboration and Practice. At the Lab, he leads an interdisciplinary research group on Montreal Waterways.
Kregg is the author of two books about environmental politics, bureaucracy and agriculture in Latin America, Guerrilla Auditors, and The Government of Beans, which won the Rachel Carson Award, the Critical Anthropology Book Prize and the Julian Steward Award for Environmental Anthropology. He also edited the volume Infrastructure, Environment and Life in the Anthropocene.
Bart Simon, PhD
Associate Professor, Sociology and Anthropology
Simon’s research is focused on the areas of science and technology studies, critical post-humanism, and everyday technocultures with specific interests in digital culture, games and virtual worlds, and alternative energy cultures. Drawing on sociological traditions in ethnography, Simon is interested in multi-modal, virtual, and collaborative ethnographic practice as well as methodological strategies for engaging with material culture and technology through research-creation.
Simon is the co-founder of the Ethnography Lab and the founding director of the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology at Concordia. His current research focuses on game modding cultures, the concept of liveness in immersive theatre, solar powered experience design, and creative encounters with artificial intelligence.
Maria-Carolina Cambre, PhD
Assistant Professor, Education
Cambre’s interests include the politics of communication, the issue of representation, critical policy analysis & critical visual sociology and anthropology, all with an eye to social justice issues as well as community and identity broadly speaking. Thus, Cambre looks at representation mainly through semiotics, anthropological and sociological theory, and with respect to the literature in visual cultural studies, communication and discourse analysis. Cambre uses various frameworks and lenses, generally with a critical focus. Cambre is interested in theoretical investigations within the realm of semiotics and ethics broadly speaking especially in relation to communication and the visual. Cambre conducts artistic research through creative research & exploration, again centering on concerns around visualities & representation.
Mitchell McLarnon, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Education
Mitchell McLarnon is an Assistant Professor of Adult Education and Community-Based Learning in the Department of Education. His research interests include institutional ethnography, community-based and participatory research, visual methodologies, environmental education, land-based education, climate change education, community gardening, gentrification, food insecurity and urban political ecology. As co-director of the Visual Methods Studio, Mitchell employs an ethics first approach to visual methodologies and brings them into conversation with institutional ethnography. Institutional ethnography as a sociology seeks to reveal how people’s local work processes can be connected across time and space by paying attention to the political, economic, and administrative systems that produce and shape diverging human experiences, while visual methods encourage researchers to make data collection and representation visual. In this sense, his research seeks to make the unseen visible for more evocative observations and interpretations.
Mark K. Watson, PhD
Associate Professor, Sociology and Anthropology
Watson joined the Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Concordia University as Assistant Professor in July 2008 but had first moved to Montreal in 2006 to take up a position as Postdoctoral Fellow in the Comparative Study of Indigenous Rights and Identities in the Department of Anthropology, McGill University. There, he developed his work on Indigenous Ainu in Tokyo in terms of thinking about Urban Indigenous Studies as a coherent (sub-)field of anthropological research. He did his doctoral work in Anthropology at the University of Alberta between 2000-2005, two years of which he spent doing fieldwork as Visiting Researcher at the Institute for International Culture, Showa Women’s University, Tokyo, Japan. He also spent eight months at the Centre for Japanese Research, Institute of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia. His doctoral thesis (2006) was entitled Kanto Resident Ainu and the Urban Indigenous Experience.
Javiera Araya Moreno, PhD
Javiera Araya-Moreno completed a Ph.D. in Sociology at the Université de Montréal and is currently a FRQSC postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University and in the Faculty of Law at the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez. Her current research project explores how car theft became the symbol of crime and insecurity in Chile, and how cars are unstable entities when treated and constructed by law and bureaucracies. At the intersection of the anthropology of the state, actor-network theory and socio-legal studies, her research draws on ethnographic approaches to describe how legal bureaucracies translate daily life into legal cases and public problems. When she is not (sociologically) investigating stolen cars in Chile, she is involved in qualitative research projects on the justice system in Quebec.
Daniela Giudici, PhD
Daniela Giudici is a Marie Curie Global Research Fellow working on the TAKEBACK project at Concordia University and at Polytechnic of Turin (Italy). Her current project explores the intersections of urban transformations, urban activism and sustainability agendas, in Canada and Europe.
She is a political anthropologist, with a passion for interdisciplinary and collaborative work. Before coming to Concordia, she was engaged for several years in ethnographic work on asylum politics, humanitarianism, housing and social precarity in Europe, with a focus on Italy.
You can check Daniela’s full publications profile on her ORCID. page.
Jonathan Wald, PhD
Jonathan Wald is a PBEEE postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Concordia University and a lecturer in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His research draws from anthropology, STS, philosophy, environmental science, and speculative fiction to examine the undermining of traditional modes of science, politics, and ethics amidst the climate crisis. He worked with the Secretary of the Environment and Sustainable Development for the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais to support disaster management and international collaborations.
Maya Lamothe-Katrapani
Maya Lamothe-Katrapani is a Master’s student in Anthropology at Concordia where she coordinates the Speculative Life Research Cluster and the Concordia Ethnography Lab. As a member of the lab’s Montreal Waterways research group, she has conducted ethnographic research on various “water objects” in and around the island of Montreal. Interested in urban transformations, community activism, heritage and place-attachment her thesis examines how different meanings attributed to Montreal’s Lachine Canal coexist in this rapidly changing space of speculation and gentrification. Previously, she studied urban design and architecture at the University of Copenhagen.
Melina Campos Ortiz
Melina Campos Ortiz is a Ph.D. student in Social and Cultural Analysis. She has a background in media practice and development and is interested in feminist STS, future studies and creative ethnographic practices. In her PhD research, she seeks to explore the entanglements between soil and migration, particularly regarding issues of grief, loss and hope. Melina is the coordinator for EMERGE (formerly known as Infrastructures of Ethnography) and has been involved in the project since its inception. She is an active member of the Concordia Ethnography Lab, where she has served as the coordinator, participated in different research projects, and supported the development of its blog as a writer and curator.
John Neufield
John is a PhD student in Social and Cultural Analysis and active member of the Concordia Ethnography Lab serving as Project Coordinator for Montreal Waterways. With a dedication to Environmental Anthropology and creative ethnographic practice, John’s research interests focus on social, material, and political relationships with water, landscape, and infrastructure.
Sarah Yems
Sarah is a PhD candidate in the Social and Cultural Analysis programme. She holds a BA in English Language and Literature form the University of Oxford, and an MSc in Sustainable Development from the University of Sussex. Additionally Sarah has extensive experience working in communications and advertising having worked with the world’s largest tech, auto and FMCG clients during her time working at creative and digital agencies, and Google. In her PhD research, Sarah explores how Montreal’s river communities perform aquapelagic citizenship. Sarah is the communications coordinator for the Ethnography Lab and a member of the Waterways working group.
Manoj Suji
Manoj is a PhD student in Social and Cultural Analysis at Concordia University in Montréal, Canada. His research interests are situated at the intersection of political anthropology, environmental politics, infrastructure development, geopolitics, and resource extraction across the Himalayan regions. His PhD research examines the complexities between infrastructure developments and environmental politics with a case study of riverbed extraction in Nepal’s new (geo) political terrain. Before coming to Concordia, he was involved in the SSHRC-funded partnership grant: “Expertise, Labour and Mobility in Nepal’s Post-Conflict, Post-Disaster Reconstruction” research project with the University of British Columbia, Canada, and Social Science Baha, Nepal. Besides that, his involvement included research projects focused on infrastructure, natural resource governance, gender equality, social inclusion, Sustainable Development Goals, maternal and child health, minority rights, labor, and foreign employment in coordination with several universities, such as the University of Edinburg, University of York, University of Delaware, Aarhus University, and development partners such as the World Bank, UN Women, The Asia Foundation.
Chloe Marchal
Chloe Marchal is an undergraduate fellow of the Ethnography lab, currently pursuing a double major in Anthropology and Intermedia. Chloe is primarily interested in design anthropology, visual arts, and digital cultures, and uses her Intermedia studies to inform her anthropological work (and vice versa). Her undergraduate thesis focuses on AI sustainability and design, and the importance of interdisciplinary discussion and collaboration. She is also the Editor-in-Chief of the SASU magazine, Stories from Montreal.
Nathan Ferguson
Nathan Ferguson is a Master’s candidate at Concordia’s department of Sociology and Anthropology. His research concerns the scientific field of transcultural psychiatry in Montreal. Of special interest in his ongoing thesis project are the various roles and statuses of the body in transcultural psychiatric research, education, and practice. Nathan approaches the ethnography of this professional subdiscipline using the resources of science and technology studies, the political anthropology of health, and the new materialisms. His prior academic research concerned, among other things, the philosophical orientation of alternative somatic therapies, and the narrative structure of the Platonic dialogues. He currently works as a teaching assistant with Dr. Hetherington (The History of Anthropological Thought) and as a research assistant with Dr. Marc Lafrance (contemporary politics of gender medicine).
Derek Pasborg
Derek Pasborg is a Concordia University Master’s student studying Sociology. Their research interests are at the intersection between sociology, anthropology, and game studies, with particular interest in how individuals’ personal narratives shape the affective discourse of video games, and the implications of this for individuals’ social lives in gaming communities.
Camila Patiño Sanchez
Camila Patiño Sanchez is a Ph.D. student in Social and Cultural Analysis at Concordia University and M.Sc. in Geography from the Université de Montréal. She is interested in water and energy infrastructures in Canada and Colombia, from Science and Technology Studies and Political Ecology. For her Ph.D. she is studying the articulation of energy sovereignty discourses with the politics of energy transition, by analyzing the informal infrastructures of electricity in rural and peri-urban areas in Colombia. She is also a member of the Concordia Ethnography Lab in the EMERGE and Waterways projects, in which she participates in projects on the politics of water and green infrastructures in Montreal in partnership with the INRS, and the geopolitical history of hydropower in Quebec in the Department of Geography in the Université de Montréal.
Hanine El Mir
Hanine is an avid activist first and an aspiring anthropologist more recently. She holds an MA in Social & Cultural Anthropology from Concordia University, a BA in English Literature and a BA in Media/Communications, with two minors in Film/Visual Studies and Arabic Language, from the American University of Beirut. She works as a researcher, journalist, writer, and translator, and dreams of becoming a thesaurus one day. During her time at the Ethnography Lab, Hanine contributed to the Ethnoblab blog as a writer and editor and was the Wordfactory writing group coordinator. In her free time, Hanine tends to a community garden, cooks at a vegan solidarity kitchen, and makes games which you can find on itch.io.
Carlos Olaya Díaz
Carlos Olaya Díaz is a PhD student in Social and Cultural Analysis at Concordia University, with a LL.M and a Law degree from the National University of Colombia. He is interested in the dynamics of State formation and environmental governance in Colombia, especially in the deforestation hotspots of the country. His current PhD research project is an ethnography about the emotional entanglements between plants and humans in the rice monocrops in Colombia, from a combination of marxist approaches and multispecies ethnography. Carlos has worked with the Ethnography Lab’s projects related with ethnography and infrastructure such as Emerge, and some contributions to Waterways.
Isabella Byrne
Isabella Byrne (she/her) is an ethnographic writer with interests in materiality, play, anthropology of religions, games (both analog and digital), memory, embodiment, methods, post-humanism, sensory ethnography, ritual, fiction and how we make meaning. She is especially interested in the craft of writing. She is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Social and Cultural Anthropology at Concordia University under the guidance of Dr. Bart Simon. Prior to this, she obtained a Bachelor of Arts with Distinction from the same university, majoring in both Anthropology and Religious and Cultural Studies. Her Master’s thesis uses auto-ethnography to explore the features used to create affect and meaningful journeys in video games. When she is not reading ethnography, or books on narrative design, you’ll find her playing tabletop games such as Gloomhaven, Oathsworn, Blades in the Dark, Dungeons & Dragons, or devouring novels at the speed of light. Find her on LinkedIn.
FORMER COORDINATORS
Aryana Soliz
Ceyda Yolgormez
Onder Gunes
Marie Lecuyer
Melina Campos Ortiz
Maya Katrapani
FORMER MEMBERS
Elizabeth White
Fariba Almasi
Agnieszka Bill-Duda
Sara Breitkreutz
Marie-Eve Drouin-Gagné
Emanuelle Dufour
Mathieu Guerin
Alix Johnson
Bonnie Klohn
Carmen Lamothe
Brieanna Paget
Vjosana Shkurti
Adam van Sertima
Sami Zenderoudi
Margaret (Maggie) Dubyk
Heather Wallman
John Marlon Elie Deidouss
Nora Lamontagne
Arturo Esquirel
Frederica Chiusole
Tristan Biehn
Lindsey Jackson
Treva Michelle Legassie
Lucian Ivanov
Jessica Bleuer
Onder Gunnes
Adriana Cabrera Cleves
Gabrielle Lavenir
Kris Millet
Aruana Soliz
Tricia Toso
Ceyda Yolgörnez
Irmak Taner
Genevieve Collins
Sarah Bahrami
Pamela Fillion
Pier-Olivier Tremblay
Paula Bath
Ariana Seferiades Prece
Andrea Caroní Schweitzer Gil
Anne-Marie Turcotte
Amrita Gurung
Clara Casian