Inaugural lectures are ritual-heavy events. True to the spirit of the occasion, the performance starts with an ancestral invocation and takes you on a circular ceremonial journey: from my early engagement with art, and a slow transition into anthropology, to a rediscovery of creative practice as mode of learning, collaboration and communication. The central argument is that, since improvisation lies at the heart of ethnographic fieldwork, the stretch to poetry, painting, collage, drama, film, dance, and sonic experimentation is not a huge jump. I capture the intention with the term ‘stretched ethnography’, which emphasises the effort needed to let go of academic inhibitions, the confidence and strength gained through repeated practice, and the ever-present possibility that the elastic breaks, when outcomes fail to have ethnographic relevance. While this is not necessarily a problem, I like to make a case for the pull back of anthropology’s core principles: immersive fieldwork, a deep interest in multiple voices, and critical epistemological analysis.

Maruška Svašek is Professor of Anthropology at Queens University Belfast, co-Director of the Centre for Creative Ethnography, and Fellow of the Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice. Her research focuses on the affective relationality of humans, artefacts, and spaces in an era of connectivity and environmental change. In the past decade, she has experimented with non-textual forms of representation, resulting in installations, poetry, paintings, a play, and short experimental films. Her publications include Ethnographies of Movement, Sociality and Space: Place-Making in the New Northern Ireland (2018, with Milena Komarova), Creativity in Transition: Politics and Aesthetics of Cultural Production Across the Globe (2016, with Birgit Meyer), Emotions and Human Mobility: Ethnographies of Movement (2012), Moving Subjects, Moving Objects: Transnationalism, Cultural Production and Emotions (2012), Anthropology, Art and Cultural Production (2007), Postsocialism: Politics and Emotions in Central and Eastern Europe (2006) and Mixed Emotions: Anthropological Studies of Feelings (2005, with Kay Milton).

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Brian Friel Theatre, Queen's University Belfast

Wednesday 15 April 2026, Lecture 5pm - 6pm, followed by a drinks reception.

This event is hosted by the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics, Queen's University Belfast.