The 2025 Ethnographic Salon–an annual event hosted by the Ethnography Studio celebrating various forms of ethnographic analysis–will explore interference as a condition for and object of ethnographic research, with our guests Meghanne Barker (University College London), Jenny Chio (USC), and Juno Salazar Parreñas (Cornell University). The 2025 Salon student workshop, taking place the morning of April 11, will be open to doctoral students in Southern California and the EMERGE collective. 

How do we as ethnographers interfere–within our research, via our research, despite our research, as our research? And into what do we interfere? This workshop takes interference as practice, condition, and/or object of ethnographic research. In visual anthropology and documentary film, some have insisted on non-interference in order to follow everyday life as it unfolds. The same has been insisted for participant-observation, emerging out of perspectives ranging from positivist scientific aims, to wariness around a colonial or neocolonial mandate to interfere in subjects’ lives. Yet anthropologists have also recently called for interference as a modality and methodology of interrupting ideas of naturalness and commonsense, both within the anthropological discipline and beyond (Biehl and Adams 2023). 

To apply: Fill out this form by February 28. You will be asked to provide a brief description of your research project and a few provisional words on how you plan to explore the theme of interference. The Salon workshop is open to doctoral students in Southern California.

There will also be a public hybrid roundtable featuring the Salon guests on April 11, 3pm PT. Join us in MCB 102 (note the room change) or register to receive the roundtable Zoom link here. Please reach out to Katie Ulrich (ulrichk@usc.edu) with any questions.