Sensory Futures Ethnography: A Talk by Sarah Pink

This free public lecture is part of the Rural Futures in the Asia-Pacific Symposium.

Sensory Futures Ethnography: A Connective Thread for Life in an Uncertain World

We live in contemporary global circumstances where uncertainty is increasingly visible and accompanied by a burgeoning interest in futures across academia, industry, consultancy and think-tank sectors.

In this lecture, Sarah explores sensory ethnography theory and practice as a connective thread, enabling focus on what and how we can know in the inevitable uncertainty of life. She will propose that sensing and feeling as embodied and emotional research, practice and scholarship offer collaborative and connective being, knowing and understanding: between researchers, participants and place; through pasts, presents and futures; across diversely situated epistemologies and scholarships; and between academia, creative practice, public and private sectors. In doing so she’ll draw on collaborative research and dialogues across South East Asia, Japan, Latin America, Scandinavia and Australia.

She will argue that as uncertainty becomes a focus, and the urge to comprehend futures grows, sensory ethnography practice offers ground-up engagement grown from the local and situated, but potentially globally connective.

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Sarah Pink(FASSA, PhD) is Distinguished Professor, ARC Laureate Professor and Director of the Emerging Technologies Research Lab and FUTURES Hub at Monash University, Australia. She is Visiting Professor at Halmstad University, Sweden and University of the West of England, United Kingdom and has been awarded Honorary Doctorates by Malmo and Halmstad Universities in Sweden. Sarah is an award-winning design and futures anthropologist and documentary filmmaker. In addition to her work in Sensory Ethnography, she is known internationally for her work on everyday futures, emerging technologies and methodological innovation. Her recent books include Emerging Technologies / Life at the Edge of the Future (2023) and Design Ethnography (2022).

This lecture is part of the Rural Futures in the Asia-Pacific Symposium organised by Dr Nancy Ji, Lecturer in Architectural Design, Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning; Dr Judit Kroo, Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies, Asia Institute; Professor Susanne Klien and Associate Professor James Letson, Modern Japanese Studies Program, Hokkaido University, supported by the Hokkaido – Melbourne Joint Research Workshops Fund.