NATHAN FERGUSON and MICHAEL KISHCHUK

Part three of our three part blog series on Montreal geology. The oldest histories of a place are written not in words, but in rocks. What do the rocks of Montreal tell to those who try to listen? How can we translate their stories, and share this lithic narrative? Co-written by an anthropologist and a geologist, this series includes an introduction and two complementary myths of Montreal.

NATHAN FERGUSON and MICHAEL KISHCHUK

Part two of of blog series on Montreal geology. The oldest histories of a place are written not in words, but in rocks. What do the rocks of Montreal tell to those who try to listen? How can we translate their stories, and share this lithic narrative? Co-written by an anthropologist and a geologist, this series includes an introduction and two complementary myths of Montreal.

NATHAN FERGUSON and MICHAEL KISHCHUK

The oldest histories of a place are written not in words, but in rocks. What do the rocks of Montreal tell to those who try to listen? How can we translate their stories, and share this lithic narrative? Co-written by an anthropologist and a geologist, this series includes an introduction and two complementary myths of Montreal.

MARIE LECUYER & CARLOS VELÁSQUEZ

On February 17th, 2023, the Ethnography Lab invited fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson to discuss his craft and how he envisions its relation to social sciences. On this occasion we proposed to ask what this craft is about, how to “do” the writing. and what writing can do for and to us.

CAMILA PATIÑO SÁNCHEZ

In this ethnography of Frédéric-Back park, Patiño Sánchez draws on Cristina Moretti’s walking ethnography exercise, giving importance to more-than-human encounters and their manifestations. This results in a rich lecture of the park, configured by multiple entanglements of human and non-human beings.

JAVIERA ARAYA-MORENO

During a workshop at the Ethnography Lab, we talked about how to learn to do ethnography. One way of learning, proposed in this blog, is to read ethnographies. And particularly one part of them: the stories that seem secondary.

MAYA LAMOTHE-KATRAPANI

This blog entry responds to Lamothe-Katrapani’s experience walking along urban water in Montreal with The Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Montréal. She addresses her personal relationship with water in cities and how the CIRM’s conferences-experiences allowed her to rethink her encounters with the St-Lawrence river in the winter.

ALEXANDRIA HAMMOND, IRIS STEFANI JUNE, MELINA CAMPOS ORTIZ, NEHA CHUGH and ALIA NURMOHAMED.

The antihero-motherhood reading group started as a project to expand theoretical horizons, exchange methodological practices, and build a community around a somehow silenced topic amid social distancing fatigue. The following series of micro-blogs are the reading group’s response to the Festival International du Film Ethnographique du Québec (FIFEQ)’s invitation to the Concordia Ethnography Lab to write about the films premiered during their 2022 edition last May.

MELINA CAMPOS ORTIZ

Abolissons Les Tropiques is an experimental auto-ethnographic piece written in three blog entries. In this third and final entry, Campos Ortiz present how paying attention to snow sensoria is helping her find her place both in a new city and in my “tropical” upbringing

HANINE EL MIR

In fall 2020, well into Covidcene-living, a three-researcher team led by Dr. Bart Simon was formed to study themes around community and success among Montreal indie game developers, particularly those belonging to the GameplaySpace (GPS) co-working space. This blog post outlines some of the initial findings.

EMMA TALLON

Since moving to Montreal in September 2021, Emma Tallon has been struggling with finding a sense of home in new surroundings. This blog deals with feelings of loss, abandonment, insecurity, and unknowingness. Above all, it is a personal exploration of Tallon’s reconceptualization of home beyond four walls.

MELINA CAMPOS ORTIZ

In February 2020, Melina Campos Ortiz was invited to join a team studying snow at the Concordia Ethnography Lab. Less than a month later, COVID-19 kicked in, and Ortiz had to start her studies, not in Montreal but San José, Costa Rica, where she was born and raised. Now in Montreal, she continues her exploration of space, place, and north-south power relations in knowledge production. This blog is the second of a series where she engages with seasonality from my embodied experience.

AFSHAN GOLRIZ

Afshan Golriz’s fieldwork in Volcán de Buenos Aires, Costa Rica, over 11 years has been marked by the ongoing struggle to understand where the presence of Del Monte’s Pindeco, the region’s pineapple-producing agricultural giant, falls within discourses of ethics, extractivism, and unequal distributions of power within capitalist structures. Such ethical dilemmas have become increasingly puzzling when faced with the everyday realities of Volcanians, as demonstrated in the following excerpt from Golriz’s field notes.

JOHN NEUFELD

Smoke filled skies on the path to the field brought with it a mixed bag of emotion, stirring up reflections that have served as a prelude to my fieldwork in Alberta. When wildfire smoke becomes part of everyday sensory experience how does it shape the individual or collective emotionality and meaning related to climate change, ecological grief, or denial?

MELINA CAMPOS ORTIZ

In February 2020, Melina Campos Ortiz was invited to join a team studying snow at the Concordia Ethnography Lab. Less than a month later, COVID-19 kicked in, and she had to start her studies not in Montreal but San José, Costa Rica, where she was born and raised. Abolissons Les Tropiques is an experimental auto-ethnographic piece written in three blog entries.

HANINE EL MIR

Drawing from Denielle Elliott and Dara Culhane’s A Different Kind of Ethnography, this blog post offers a walking tour of Nintendo’s life-simulation videogame, Animal Crossing. The tour addresses the spaces video games enabled during pandemics and the way they present a temporary alternative to activities done in real life when people could not leave the house.

KREGG HETHERINGTON

If you’ve ever been to the Concordia Ethnography Lab, then you’ll know the large, sturdy, and decidedly amateur hunk of a table that lends the room much of its character. The table was the brainchild of Adam Van Sertima, a philosopher-carpenter who tasked himself with furnishing the Lab in the month it opened. This post is an introduction and homage to that table.