As a Junior Researcher in ETHOS Lab, you enrol with your own project, driven by your academic passion and interests. These projects are shared with the lab community in several ways but mainly through the concept ‘Pitch & Play’. The pitchers are the Junior researchers that will start off the semester with a presentation of the project idea, shaping it into a feedback session from the ‘players’ that consist of both junior and senior faculty and other students and lab rats. As the semester develops, so do the projects and the need for feedback are designed into more participatory enrolment of the ‘players’, depending on the project.
The last couple of weeks, the workshop-format for ‘pitch & play’ have been conducted online and this begged for extra creativity from the pitchers. Here is an insight into one of these creative (and geeky fun!) sessions.
Hashtag Activism, concept mapping – by Casper
Using concept mapping with the tool Mentimeter Casper facilitated a reflection on the main question ‘What does “activism” mean to you’? With sub-questions helping the ‘players’ through the process. Being surprised by how many words and sentences were added, Casper followed up particulars such as ‘noise’, ‘work on behalf of others’, ‘speaking on behalf of others’, ‘privilege’, ‘bureaucracy’, ‘impassion’, ‘bravery’ and many more. This turned into an interesting discussion on where the line is drawn to when something is activism opposed to other ways of influencing or raising awareness? Which causes justify ‘activism’ as opposed to conspiracy, terrorism?
Method of Ethnography, a creative writing exercise – by Natasja
Before leaping into exploring ethnographic methods for her project on the CPR-registry, Natasja made a workshop on creative writing, asking participants to reflect on ethnography as a genre! In her project, she hopes for the driving force of the project being explorations of the entanglements of emotions, experiences and practices related to CPR. For the participants, these reflections were valuable to express both in terms of enacting, disseminating and assembling robust research and the struggles that they often entail. Here is a snapshot of some of the writings on ethnography in various genres …..
ConceptuALLize – by Benedict
Using Google Jamboard, pitcher Benedict asked us all academically reflect conceptually on empirical quotes or questions developed through his thesis ‘Perception of technologies within Hackathons’. In his project, he explores how hackathons are popular event formats for “societal challenges” and coming up with solutions – predominantly technological solutions such as rapid web platforms or apps. This exercise was for the players to take a more active role in the on-going analysis of his work. Below are screenshots of the process
1 – Underlying assumption is “solving societal challenges through technological solutions”
2 – Hackathon says “we produce solutions for challenges” / Participants say “Our project did not really solve the challenge”
3 – “Technological determinism and technological solutions are the smallest common denominator”
Thank you to all the Junior Researchers – also Rikke and Luis – for creative solutions for a participatory approach to pitch & play on Zoom