Around the Fire 21.11.2025

Around the Fire

Experiments in Creative Ethnography: Entanglement

Annual Online Symposium

The annual online symposium Around the Fire, organised by Lukáš Senft and Maruška Svašek, Centre for Creative Ethnography, will take place on Friday 21 November 2025. In the spirit of sharing stories around a campfire, the contributors will take turns to perform a diversity of pieces. The theme of this year’s meeting is "entanglement."

Registration: CLICK HERE

Entanglement

Human existence is inseparable from other entities. To be entangled doesn’t simply mean the intertwining of two distinct objects: "Entanglement suggests that the very ontology of entities emerges through relationality; the entities do not preexist their involvement” (Kirby 2011, 76). Viewing reality as emerging from entanglements offers new approaches to more-than-human ecologies, to how we produce and consume, to designing creative practices on new ontological and epistemological grounds, and to reimagining our political negotiations of common worlds.

While entanglements may promise multispecies recuperation, they also carry inherent risks tied to the inevitable consequences of human extractivism and the myth of exceptionalism. We encourage participants to experiment with ways of representing entanglements where "we are at stake to each other" (Haraway 2016, 55). The human role in precarious presents and futures emerges without the safety net of mastery over seemingly separate and controllable nonhuman realms: it is a process of becoming-with-in other planetary stories. The existence of Earth's dwellers depends on more-than-human entanglements.

Programme (all times in Irish/British wintertime, GMT)

Session 1:	Symbiosis
9-9:05am	Welcome Lukáš Senft, Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences Maruška Svašek, Queen’s University Belfast
9:05-9:20am	Hungry Hill Michael Holly, Queen's University Belfast
9.20-9.30am	The Body That Holds: Entanglements with the Numinous Kathryn Hummel, Birla Institute of Technology & Sciences, Pilani
9:30-9:45am	Chicken Shoes Colette Casey, Queen’s University Belfast graduate
9.50-10.00am	Discussion in breakout rooms

Session 2:	Ursula K. Le Guin Creative Performance
10-11am	Ursula K. Le Guin creative performance: Edward Narain and Tarryn Phillips The invited performance is named after the well-known American writer, poet, and polemist Ursula K. Le Guin who died in 2018. This yesr, the performance will be delivered by Edward Narain and Tarryn Phillips, authors of the hit ethnographic novel, Sugar (University of Toronto Press 2024). Edward Narain is a Fijian writer, researcher and political analyst whose work regularly appears in the Fiji Sun and Fiji Times. Tarryn Phillips is a medical anthropologist and Associate Professor of Crime, Justice and Legal Studies in the Department of Social Inquiry at La Trobe University. Edward and Tarryn will be performing a short story – a deleted scene from Sugar - called ‘Tinkering’, a playful and poignant tale about a taxi driver named Avinesh as he tries to find a wheelchair for his diabetic mother against the odds. This will be followed by a short dialogue about the creative process of writing an ethnographic novel.

Session 2:

Ursula K. Le Guin Creative Performance

10-11am

Ursula K. Le Guin creative performance: Edward Narain and Tarryn Phillips

The invited performance is named after the well-known American writer, poet, and polemist Ursula K. Le Guin who died in 2018. This yesr, the performance will be delivered by Edward Narain and Tarryn Phillips, authors of the hit ethnographic novel, Sugar (University of Toronto Press 2024). Edward Narain is a Fijian writer, researcher and political analyst whose work regularly appears in the Fiji Sun and Fiji Times. Tarryn Phillips is a medical anthropologist and Associate Professor of Crime, Justice and Legal Studies in the Department of Social Inquiry at La Trobe University. Edward and Tarryn will be performing a short story – a deleted scene from Sugar - called ‘Tinkering’, a playful and poignant tale about a taxi driver named Avinesh as he tries to find a wheelchair for his diabetic mother against the odds. This will be followed by a short dialogue about the creative process of writing an ethnographic novel.

Session 3:	Ruptures/Connections
11-11:15am	Ghost Mines James Davoll, Queen's University Belfast
11:15-11:30am	Disentangling the Family Archive Arbër Qerka-Gashi, The Balkanism Project, London
11:30-11:45am	The Nature Performs Prashant Khattri, University of Allahabad, India
11:45am-12pm	The Reflection of Fieldwork in Vietnam, Slovakia, and Czechia Tereza Staňkovská, Charles University, Petra Nováková, Charles University Robert Repka, Charles University
12-12:15pm	Discussion in breakout rooms

Session 4:	Place/Landscape
12.15-12.30pm	A place like you and me: Composing stories for transregional liminality Campus Novel: Giannis Delagrammatikas, Yiannis Sinioroglou, Ino Varvariti
12.30-12.45pm	Treasure Hunters: Mudlarking and the Entanglement of Human and Nonhuman Histories Annemarie Lopez, Walk Listen Create
12:45-1pm	The view from within: A (counter)visual essay at the window of the Indian university Dina Zoe Belluigi, Queen’s University Belfast
1-1:15pm	Discussion in breakout rooms

Session 5:	Performing Bodies
1:45-2pm	Dance: a knot of presence Nahelli Chavoya, University of Limerick, Ireland
2-2:15pm	Peace, talk to me... Melek Kaptanoglu, HAPP, Queen's University Belfast
2:15-2:30pm	The Entanglements of Actors and Audiences: An Ethnography of Theatregoing Hanife Schulte
2:30-2:45pm	Discussion in breakout rooms

Session 6:	Objects
2:45-3pm	Extracting, Drying, Curating, and Freezing: Seed-Saving for the Apocalypse Elisa Sofia Jimenez Borja, Queen's University Belfast
3pm-3:15pm	Inheriting Entanglements: Writing with Colonial Objects (6) Nandi Jola, Queen’s University Belfast, and Briony Widdis, Queen's University Belfast
3:15-3:30pm	Articulated Absences and Silenced Souvenirs: exploring Switzerland’s complicity in the trading of Nazi gold through a counter-archive (12) Vera Zurbrügg, Independent Scholar
3:30-3:45pm	“Orphan(ed) Feet” from a larger piece entitled “Finger(s)-Millet-Fieldwork-Photo: Scholarly Experiments in Use” Priya R. Chandrasekaran, Liberal Arts and Anthropology at Juilliard
3:45-4pm	Discussion in breakout rooms

Session 7:	Rhythms
4-4:15pm	Embodied Entanglements: Dancing Sound in the Dark Srijaa Kundu, University of Limerick, Ireland
4:15-4:30pm	Entanglement of the local and the global in traditional Irish community music-making Rina Schiller, Queen's University Belfast
4:30-4:45pm	Commonplace Entanglements Leonie Hannan, Queen's University Belfast Liza Thompson, Bloomsbury Publishing
4:45-5pm	Discussion in breakout rooms
5-5:15pm	Closing remarks