This event is online only.
COVID-19 forced countless ethnographers and educators into practicing extreme forms of digital improvisation. Drawing on one such year of participant observation in Japanese higher education, I reflect on improvisation’s role in constructing ethnography. In addition, I consider renewed debates between ethnographers over the appropriateness of digital ethnography sparked by the pandemic, and compare it to similar partisanships emerging between educators over digital teaching and learning.
Akira Shah is Postdoctoral Affiliate at the School of Anthropology & Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford, and Post-Doctoral Research Associate at the Japan Research Centre, SOAS University of London. His core research is focused on the politics of globalism and internationalism, contextualized in the rise of International Baccalaureate (IB) education in Japan. Other key research interests include theory’s of Whiteness, minoritization, transnational identity, and digitality.
Post-doctoral Affiliate, School of Anthropology & Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford
Akira's core research is focused on the politics of globalism and internationalism, contextualized in the rise of International Baccalaureate (IB) education in Japan.