{"id":5641,"date":"2025-03-04T12:28:57","date_gmt":"2025-03-04T12:28:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.whpress.co.uk\/publications\/?p=5641"},"modified":"2026-03-19T13:06:46","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T13:06:46","slug":"meam-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.whpress.co.uk\/publications\/2025\/03\/04\/meam-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Multispecies Ethnography and Artful Methods"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Edited by Andrea Petitt, Anke Tonnaer, V\u00e9ronique Servais, Catrien Notermans and Natasha Fijn<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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‘what this volume does is guide one into wandering beyond marked and bounded fields, so we might learn better how to get lost and thus discover different ways to navigate through always-elusive, richly inhabited places’<\/p>From the Afterword by Karin Bolender<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

‘Each piece invites us to remember that meeting the mystery of others humbly and openly is a task that requires bottomless curiosity and openness’<\/p>From the Afterword by Karin Bolender<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Order a copy<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Open Access PDF (Standard)<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Open Access PDF (Enhanced)<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
MEAM Website<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n
Metadata<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Multispecies Ethnography and Artful Methods<\/em> explores the potential of multimodal art practices in doing qualitative research beyond the human. Through artful endeavours such as creative writing, photography, filmmaking, drawing and poetry, the volume aims to overcome the shortcomings of conventional, anthropocentric and logocentric methods in multispecies research. To move beyond the limitations of language and linguistic communication, the contributors build on the long tradition of visual and sensory anthropology while also engaging in and consciously reflecting on innovative, creative and artistic methods. Taking a multispecies and more-than-human perspective \u2013 ranging from snow and trees to animals and an AI oracle \u2013 the volume investigates ways to touch, speak, listen, feel, walk with and reach across different species.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This book and accompanying multimedia website advance the frontier of publishing artful expressions of academic research by highlighting how creative practices can be the very core of data collection, analysis and the communication of research. As such, the artful pieces are not \u2018just\u2019 illustrations of textual representations, but are practised as part of an iterative process of data collection and analysis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The contributions by well-established scholars, early career researchers and postgraduates who carry out new, cutting-edge research offer an engaging range of analytical, methodological and empiric orientations, while conversing at the intersection of multispecies ethnography and artful methods. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This book is Open Access through the support of the Open Book Collective<\/a>, The University of Li\u00e8ge<\/a> and The Australian National University<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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About MEAM<\/strong>
The international  MEAM <\/strong>network for Multispecies Ethnography and Artistic Methods was founded by Andrea Petitt, V\u00e9ronique Servais, Anke Tonnaer and Catrien Notermans in 2022, when an online workshop was held. The same team organised the hybrid inaugural MEAM conference in Li\u00e8ge, July 2023. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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THE EDITORS<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Andrea Petitt<\/strong> is currently working as a researcher at Laboratoire d\u2019Anthropologie Sociale et Culturelle (LASC) at Universit\u00e9 de Li\u00e8ge, Belgium, and is affiliated with the Centre for Gender Research at Uppsala University, Sweden. Andrea has worked on long-term multispecies ethnography research projects based on fieldwork in Botswana, Sweden and Colorado (USA), with shorter stints in Nepal, Canada, Ethiopia and Tanzania. Increasingly, Andrea has worked with, and developed, artistic and \u2018artful\u2019 research methods for data collection, analysis and dissemination and has given a number of workshops on the subject for Ph.D. students and Faculty across Sweden and internationally. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anke Tonnaer<\/strong> is an anthropologist and assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology and Development Studies at Radboud University, Nijmegen (The Netherlands). Her research interests developed from long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Indigenous Australia, studying the intersection of nature and culture in tourism, to rewilding initiatives and the challenges of multispecies cohabitation and conservation practices in north-west Europe, especially the Netherlands. Her desire to narrate the more-than-human world in alternative ways alongside the rational dominant ways in ecology has brought her to exploring art-based methodology and sensory ethnography. In 2023, Anke worked with Catrien Notermans in an Arts-Science collaboration called TASC (The Art of Science) to design a post-anthropocentric future for the city of Nijmegen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

V\u00e9ronique Servais<\/strong> is Professor in Anthropology of Communication at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Li\u00e8ge, Belgium. She is interested in the profound bio-social relationships that exists between human beings and animals (and other living beings). She conducted research in the field of \u2018animal assisted therapies\u2019 and \u2018enchanted encounters\u2019 between human beings and animals. She also studied visitor-primates interactions at a zoological park and dolphin-trainers\u2019 affective communication at a Seaquarium. More recently, she has been doing research on the experience of encountering the forest, using microphenomenological interviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Catrien Notermans<\/strong> is an anthropologist and associate professor in the Department of Cultural Anthropology and Development Studies at Radboud University, Nijmegen (The Netherlands). Her research line is on social relatedness with and beyond the human and focuses on the intersection of kinship, gender and religion in India, West Africa and Europe. Her most recent projects are on interspecies communication in women\u2019s economic and religious activities in Rajasthan (India); and on storying human-river relatedness in the Netherlands. Her projects are based on visual, sensory and arts-based ethnography which are the methodologies she also teaches at the Anthropology Department. In 2023, Notermans worked together with Anke Tonnaer in an Arts-Science collaboration called TASC (The Art of Science) to design a post-anthropocentric future for the city of Nijmegen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Natasha Fijn<\/strong> is Director of the Australian National University\u2019s Mongolia Institute. She has been awarded a mid-career ARC Future Fellowship to conduct research on ‘A Multi-species Anthropological Approach to Influenza’ (2022\u20132026). Natasha wrote a seminal multispecies ethnography based in Mongolia, Living with Herds: Human-animal Coexistence in Mongolia<\/em> (2011). She has co-edited five books and several journal volumes, including three special issues oriented toward visual anthropology and ethnographic filmmaking, and three engaging with multispecies and sensory anthropology in the journals Inner Asia<\/em> (2020), The Australian Journal of Anthropology <\/em>(2020) and Anthropology Today<\/em> (2023). She recently published a co-edited book with Routledge, Nurturing Alternative Futures: Living with Diversity in a More-than-human World <\/em>in 2023. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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CONTENTS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

INTRODUCTION
Andrea Petitt, Anke Tonnaer, V\u00e9ronique Servais, Catrien Notermans and Natasha Fijn<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. WRITING A SONG FOR AIIA<\/em>. SPECULATIVE FICTION IN AN ART-SCIENCE COLLABORATION
Text: Catrien Notermans and Anke Tonnaer<\/em>
Visuals: Marcel van Brakel<\/em>
[essay, poetry and AI visuals]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. <\/em>EARTH SWIMMERS \/ ON CAPTURE: A PRACTICE-BASED ETHNOGRAPHY OF MOLE CATCHING AND FILM MAKING IN NORTH YORKSHIRE. 
Hermione Spriggs in collaboration with mole catcher Nigel Stock<\/em>
[essay and film]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. <\/em>THE SOUNDS OF SNOW: <\/strong>AN EXPLORATION OF HUMAN-SNOW RELATIONS IN ILULISSAT, KALAALLIT NUNAAT
Nanna Sandager Kisby<\/em>
[essay, photos and sound]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. <\/em>THE ENDURING PRESENCE OF THE EUCALYPTUS TREE: A PHOTO ESSAY
Natasha Fijn<\/em>
[photo essay]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. <\/em>ARTISTIC CO-DISCOVERY IN MULTISPECIES COLLABORATION 
Bartram+Deigaard<\/em>
[essay and image composites]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

6. ATTENDING TO FIREBUGS: ARTISTIC INVESTIGATIONS FOR RESPECTFUL CORRESPONDENCES
Charlotte Dorn<\/em>
[photo essay]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

7. <\/em>FARMING COWS AND WORMS
Simone de Boer and Hanna Charlotta Wernersson <\/em>
[essay and multimedia montage]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

8. TO TOUCH LIGHTLY IN PASSING 
Merlijn Huntjens, Nina Willems and Leonie Cornips <\/em>
[essay, photos, sketches and poetry]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

9. <\/em>FREAKS OF NATURE: USING DEEP REFLEXIVITY TO UNDERSTAND TRANSGENICS
Lisa Jean Moore <\/em>
[essay and photos]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

10. ETHNOGRAPHY OF WORKING COWHORSES: RHYMING SENSORY METHODS
Andrea Petitt<\/em>
[essay and poetry]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AFTERWORD
Karin Bolender<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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1 July 2025\u00a0
ISBN 978-1-912186-93-8 (PB) \u2013\u00a0\u00a330
978-1-912186-94-5 (ebook, MEAM multimedia) \u2013 Open Access
978-1-912186-95-2 (ebook, standard)\u00a0\u2013 Open Access
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