Welcome to the Studio at the Anthropology Department
The EES promotes a philosophy of accessibility, one that recognizes how different bodies, minds, identities, and backgrounds lead us to diversely interact with the world, especially in education and research contexts.
AJ Jones, Director of EES
The Experiential Ethnography Studio (EES) is a physical and intellectual hub for researchers in the social sciences and humanities who seek to critically align their scholarly processes and products with the interests of their research communities through creative, sensory, embodied, and collaborative methodologies.
Invested in the experiential, we recognize how the dual-meaning of ethnography as a method and genre directly situates researchers in the engagement between humans, nonhumans, media, materials, and environments that produces sensory knowledges and, in turn, contributes to the ethical pursuits of understanding oneself and one’s place in the world. Organized under a studio model, we encourage open exploration, dialogue, and community support as we collectively build a toolkit of approaches for a more explicitly collaborative and ethical ethnographic practice.
Our expanding interests thus far include photography and film, performance, haptography, installation, visual forms, tactile modalities, and digital art to explore pressing issues in health, citizenship, and identity in St. Louis, the U.S., and countries around the world. We are trained in many of these approaches, but are also learning many for the first time as we develop projects with our research communities in mind.
We therefore invite students and faculty from across the University to join in this undertaking, from those already expert in their field or advanced in their research projects to those who are looking to explore for the first time the experiential dimensions of their research through various multimodal and sensory engagements.
The EES promotes a philosophy of accessibility, one that recognizes how different bodies, minds, identities, and backgrounds lead us to diversely interact with the world, especially in education and research contexts. Accessibility therefore demands accountability for our relationships with others and a growth-oriented mindset as we develop research objectives, methods, and strategies for dissemination alongside the existing expertise and needs of the communities with whom we study.
To learn more on or to get in touch email us at jaudrey@wustl.edu (Director) or ethnographystudio@wustl.edu