The Human Show: Innovation through Social Science

Ginie Servant-Miklos is an engaged environmental educator with fifteen years of experience in education practice, research, and advocacy. She currently holds an Assistant Professorship in behavioural sciences at the Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Her research and education work focuses on developing innovative pedagogies for societal impact. She developed the Experimental Pedagogics educational design framework, co-founded the Bildung Climate School with Prof. Rutger Engels, and is the author of the best-selling book, Pedagogies of Collapse: A Hopeful Education for the End of the World as We Know It. Ginie is an associate member of the Club of Rome and Senior Fellow of the Comenius Network for educational innovators in the Netherlands. She is the founder and Chair of the Board of the ⁠FairFight Foundation⁠, an organisation that provides girls and women from Zambia, Zimbabwe, and India with the mental and physical benefits of martial arts practice, as well as educational support. Ginie is a vocal activist for sustainability and gender equality, advocating for change through public engagements like TEDx talks, debates, podcasts, and other digital media outlets.We are pleased to welcome Ginie on this podcast capsule on Radical Imagination. We explore the transformative power of imagination and experiential education in the face of societal and environmental crises. Ginie shares her journey from human rights advocacy to education, emphasizing the need for actionable dreams and imperfect solidarities to create meaningful change. She highlights the role of love, forgiveness, and defiance in education as tools for resilience and empowerment. Ginie also talks about her new book Pedagogies of Collapse. This radically honest, open-access book confronts the reality of collapse, acknowledging the allure of denial and despair while choosing a path of hope. Pedagogies of Collapse presents a compelling, fact-based argument for urgent action but avoids falling into the conventional categories of environmental discourse. The ebook version, A Hopeful Education for the End of the World as We Know It, is available as open access here: Bloomsbury Collections.

The Ethnographic Tarot Project intertwines the magic and mystery of tarot with the depth of anthropological inquiry. This initiative seeks to develop a distinctive tarot deck infused with ethnographic and anthropological themes, serving not only as a medium for reflection and divination but also as an innovative teaching tool aimed at enlightening students about the intricacies of ethnographic research. The aim is to collaboratively design a tarot deck that transcends traditional usage, becoming an educational resource that prompts students to explore and understand ethnographic research methodologies and anthropological insights. Each card will be thoughtfully re-imagined to incorporate significant anthropological themes, inviting contemplation on diversity, interconnectedness, frictions, and the politics and ethics of ethnographic practice. The Ethnographic Tarot Project is led by Priyanka Borpujari, Dr Fiona Murphy, and Dr Ana Ivasiuc. We are pleased to welcome the team behind The Ethnographic Tarot Project: The Arcana of Inquiry who will discuss the project's intentions, its origins, and its future direction. They will explore how tarot complements the ethnographic practice and its potential to serve as a versatile educational resource for research, supervision, and writing. More broadly, they examine how this empowering practice can shift perspectives, unlock creative potential, and deepen reflection for practitioners. Finally, they will share their thoughts on what is needed to foster more radical imagination within the neoliberal academic space. Listen to the episode to hear more about it. We have set one of the project’s tarot cards as a visual for this podcast episode. The Ethnographic Tower card within the tarot deck serves as a powerful metaphor for the tumultuous yet transformative process inherent in anthropological work. This card encapsulates the themes of upheaval, deconstruction, and the necessity for renewal, making it an exceptional teaching tool for understanding the dynamics of ethnographic inquiry. Copyright (for the artwork): Priyanka Borpujari.  Links: https://www.scribd.com/document/760415134/Ethnographic-Tarot-Project (contribution deadline extended to September 20th 2024)

Heli Rantavuo is an applied cultural studies and social sciences researcher based in Helsinki. For the past 15 years, she has worked in the technology industry in London, Stockholm and Helsinki, contributing and leading research in product and market strategy at Spotify, eBay, Microsoft and Nokia. Before working in the industry, she was a researcher at Aalto University, School of Media and Art where she graduated as Doctor of Arts, and at the Center of Welfare and Health in Finland. Heli is a founding member of the Human Sciences in Strategy association in Finland which brings together applied anthropologists and other human scientists who practise their craft outside academia.We are happy to have Heli with us speaking to her background and her experience and thoughts on isolation. She shares some of the lenses she is considering to use to explore the topic of isolation, such as temporality, embodiment and capitalism.  Lastly, she talks about what excites her the most about coming to the conference as well as her advice to those considering to attend.  Listen to the episode to hear more about it.

Erin B. Taylor & Melanie T. Uy: Anthropologists & Authors of Better Research, Better Design: How to Align Teams and Build a Human-Centric Company Culture. Dr. Erin B. Taylor has a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Sydney and is the founder of Finthropology, a company specializing in insights into people’s financial behaviour. She specializes in how people’s financial behaviour is changing along with innovation in financial services, and has carried out ethnographic research in the Caribbean, Africa and Europe. Erin is especially interested in how culture and group belonging influence people’s actions and decisions.Dr. Melanie T. Uy is a lifelong learner and known for unexpected questions. She is a ritual specialist focusing on the practices of social connection and disconnection and its impact on work and workplaces. Her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam researched how social detachment was essential to the work of migration brokers in China. She currently works as a user experience researcher in the Netherlands and previously ran consumer studies for the retail and healthcare market in the Philippines.We are excited to have Erin and Melanie with us to share this joint research project. This project is intended as a toolkit for researchers and their colleagues to help them position the value of their work and bring it forth to a desired organizational level. We ask the authors how did the idea for the project come about? How did they organize the research and what were the unexpected insights that emerged from it? Melanie and Erin ask back whether they were right or wrong with their conclusions. Listen to the episode and feel free to reach out to the authors to share your feedback. Mentioned in Podcast:Better Research,Better Design: How to Align Teams and Build a Human-Centric Company Culture by Erin B. Taylor and Melany.T.Uy Active8 PlanetAmerican Anthropological Association (AAA)AppliedAnthropology Network (AAN)EPIC 2022FinthropologyGillianTettMoving Matters: People, Goods, Power and Ideas, University of AmsterdamResponse-ability SummitThe National Association for the Practice of AnthropologyUXInsight Social Media:Erin: LinkedInMelanie: LinkedIn;...

David Prendergast is Head of the Department of Anthropology and Professor of Science, Technology and Society at Maynooth University in Ireland. Previously David worked at Intel where he was a principal investigator at the ‘Technology Research for Independent Living Centre’ and co-founder of the ‘Intel Institute for Sustainable Connected Cities’. He has also served as Visiting Professor of Healthcare Innovation at the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Trinity College Dublin. He is currently working on a book with colleagues Jamie Saris and Katja Seidel about the lives of 94 older adults in ten locations across Europe during the Covid-19 pandemic.We are happy to have David with us speaking to his background and current work at the intersection of academia and the applied sector. He shares his path into anthropology and his multiple research projects as well as gives insight into what motivated his choices to leave spaces of engagement or to take on new opportunities. As speaker at the Why the world needs Anthropologists conferencehe shares how he will be contributing to the themes as well as his advice and thoughts to those considering to attend. Listen to the episode to hear more about it.Mentioned:Why the World needs Anthropologists, Re|Generation,September 2022 https://www.applied-anthropology.com/session/regeneration-talk-iv-2/Social Media:LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidprendergast/

Sophie Strand: writer and academic cross-contaminator: on the ways we can improvise in academia and beyond.Sophie Strand is a writer based in the Hudson Valley who focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. But it would probably be more authentic to call her a neo-troubadour animist with a propensity to spin yarns that inevitably turn into love stories. Her first book of essays The Flowering Wand: Lunar Kings, Lichenized Lovers, Transpecies Magicians, and Rhizomatic Harpists Heal the Masculine is forthcoming in 2022 from Inner Traditions.Her eco-feminist historical fiction reimagining of the gospels The Madonna Secret will also be published by Inner Traditions. Her books of poetry include Love Song to a Blue God (Oread Press) and Those Other Flowers to Come (Dancing Girl Press) and The Approach (The Swan). Her poems and essays have been published by Art PAPERS, The Dark Mountain Project, Poetry.org, Unearthed, Braided Way, Creatrix, Your Impossible Voice, The Doris, Persephone’s Daughters, and Entropy. She has recently finished a work of historical fiction, The Madonna Secret, that offers an eco-feminist revision of the gospels.  She is currently researching her next epic, a mythopoetic exploration of ecology and queerness in the medieval legend of Tristan and Isolde.Today we speak about the importance of listening to one’s body and its unexpected ways to bring out intellectual results and eventually new academic fruits. For Sophie, storytelling was a way out of trauma and around pain and then became her academic method allowing to border-cross paradigms and fuse ideas. We ask how to create safety in thesesubversive spaces? And how to confront the reactions of disapproval and discontent?Sophie leads us through her story of following that sensory vein and shares the ways that could work for others as eager to improvise. Listen to the episode to reflect on our intellectual editing processes together.   (TW: this conversation touches on trauma and mental health). Mentioned in Podcast:Anne Rice Bayo AkomolafePurity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo by Mary DouglasAndreas WeberDie Wise – A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul by Stephen JenkinsonSocial media:SophieStrand

Pavel Cenkl is currently the Head of Schumacher College and Director of Learning at Dartington Trust, Devon, England and previously he held the position of Professor of Environmental Humanities and Associate Dean at Sterling College, Vermont. Pavel holds a Ph.D. in English and is the author of many articles, chapters, and two books. He has always been drawn to colleges and universities whose curriculum fully integrates learning with practice and thinking with embodiment. While pursuing research in ecologically-minded curriculum design and teaching courses in environmental philosophy, Pavel is also a passionate endurance and adventure runner. Over the past five years through a project called Climate Run, Pavel has covered hundreds of miles in the Arctic and subarctic on foot in order to bring attention to the connections between our bodies and the more-than-human world in the face of a rapidly changing climate.In this podcast episode, Pavel shares his work at Schumacher College but also other personal discoveries and aspirations. Together, we explore educational practices that blend theoretical pursuits with immersive community action and the human with the more than human. Can we use ecology as a blueprint for learning models? How to define a scientific method within the framework of regenerative learning? How to take the individual embodied practice and make it resonate with a broader audience? Join us in this conversation. Mentioned in Podcast:Schumacher CollegeTimothy MortonInto the cracks, by Bayo AkomolafeSocial media:Pavel’s LinkedInPavel’s Instagram:(https://www.instagram.com/climate_run/)Pavel’s website:http://www.climaterun.org

Désirée Driesenaar is an innovation activist, blue economy specialist, storyteller as well as external expert for the European Commission. After years of working in the corporate world as a commercial manager and B2B marketer, in 2014 Desirée went for a holistic shift and became an entrepreneur for a regenerative future. In search of purpose and sustainability, she developed a worldview of systems thinking in a quest of restoring ecosystems by building bridges between technology and nature by applying different business models and innovations. Desirée’s methods include action, storytelling, systemic narratives, and co-creation with a particular focus on the idea of regeneration – a driving factor in establishing truly sustainable and connected solutions. We are pleased to have Desirée talking to us today about concepts that are key in both her professional and personal life such as regeneration and sustainable ecosystems weaved in and through the world of technology. How can one work with technology and AI while staying in close mental and emotional affinity with all that is nature? What are the methods, principles, and approaches that Desirée has been exploring in her collaborations which help set up bridges between these two worlds? We are curious to hear how would a technology in tune with nature would look like in Desiree’s imagination. Join us on this episode to reflect on the inspiring possibilities that nature-based solutions can bring. 

Eric Garza is the founder and primary instructor at Quillwood Academy, an online institution of higher learning dedicated to helping people throughout the English-speaking world learn to navigate the changing world in which we all live. His background is diverse, spanning ecology and evolution, environmental science and policy, ecological economics, and systems thinking. Eric has also invested years learning and practicing place-based living skills, and mentors people in subsistence skills such as bow and arrow making, hunting and fishing, and gathering a wide array of edible and medicinal plants. He also teaches part-time in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at the University of Vermont.Today’s episode is about opening to the world and to the self and attempting to connect the two in the pursuit of a meaningful life. In sharing his story, Eric takes us along in a reflection on how to be vulnerable and to dig deep in the pursuit of oneself. How to be equally a scholar, hunter, carpenter, community server and more?How does he find the balance between service for others and care for the self? How has he integrated his part-time academic self to his other selves and how does he monitor his own biases within his academic endeavours? Listen to the episode to hear more about it. (PLEASE NOTE: This conversation touches on trauma, including intergenerational trauma, suicide, and mental health).Mentioned in Podcast: Quillwood Academy  Quillwood PodcastWe will dance with mountains, course by Bayo AkomolafeSocial Media:Eric’s bio

We are happy to have Cristina with us speaking to her background and current work. Cristina shares her views and relationship to activism and, as a scholar, the importance of balancing sympathy with a critical, analytical and self-reflexive research lens.

We are happy to have Alex with us speaking to his background and current work at the intersection of scholarship and political engagement. Alex shares how he came into his path as well as the unfolding of his conflicted relationship with academia, researching and teaching in the space of political imagination.

Mark and Tom have collaborated for many years on developing programs of applied ethnography. We are curious to know their reasons, methods and lessons learned. Mark and Tom emphasize the value of digging into the problem before starting to look for solutions.