Area and Global Studies for International Cooperation - AGIC

The ERC Consolidator project Food Citizens? Collective food procurement in European cities: solidarity and diversity, skills and scale (2017-2022) will organize a winter school on visual and collaborative methods in anthropological research at Leiden University’s Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology.

Winter School

The winter school builds upon and disseminates the project’s methodological toolkit for ethnographic research. This methodology has been developed over the last four years by the project team for studying collective food procurement networks, namely citizens’ initiatives involving for example foraging, short food chains and local food governance. The school is aimed at graduate students from the social sciences and humanities who are trained in field research (for example, Masters, Research Masters and 1st year Ph.D. candidates). The goal of the school is to help develop their interests and skills in multimodal anthropology, comparative and collaborative perspectives (including audiovisual methods). Research interests in food procurement are particularly welcome, but not mandatory. Please consult our project's public resources to find out more about the topic and methodology of our research. The school is co-directed by Cristina Grasseni and Federico De Musso.

The winter school aims to train and supervise a maximum of ten participants to plan and execute up to five short research projects over two weeks, working in pairs and using collaborative and audiovisual methods. The Food Citizens? team will teach modules with a special focus on collective and interactive research processes and research ethics, including participant observation, anthropology at home, cultural mapping, ethnographic photography, and video and digital documentary. Previous film-making experience is not required. Understanding and (some) experience of ethnographic fieldwork-based research is a prerequisite. The modules are designed to reflect on hands-on methodologies fostering collaboration among field-researchers. We encourage graduate students and researchers who are planning to work in collaboration with peers, for example within a research team or in larger research projects, to flag this up in their application. (You may indicate if you would prefer to participate as a pair/group. If circumstances allow we will do our best but do not guarantee to accommodate such requests, within a maximum number of 10 participants in total). The participants will present their project/artefact at the Food Citizens? Conference on Friday 4th February 2022 which will profile the Food Citizens? project’s research outcomes to a broad audience of researchers and stakeholders.

Admission

The winter school is offered by the ERC project to the selected candidates, and does not require attendance fees. For confirming admission, a retainer fee of 100 euro is requested, which will be returned upon completion of attendance. We plan to work in and around the Social Sciences campus of Leiden University, with team and individual field activities in and around the city of Leiden, the Netherlands. Participants should arrange their own travel and accommodation for the duration of the winter school and should budget for their own maintenance. Participants are strongly encouraged to arrange for travel and health insurance.

Public Health

Please inform yourselves about testing and quarantine rules and regulations before planning to come to Leiden.

International participants, please consult the University of Leiden and the Dutch government websites for the latest Corona pandemic developments. We encourage attendants to use self-tests before activities, for added safety and as a courtesy to others. In case of pandemic restrictions not allowing us to run the school in presence, we will hold the format online for the entire group (the school will not be run in hybrid format).

Equipment

Editing stations are available in University buildings, but it is highly recommended that participants have their own laptop, with video and photo editing software pre-installed. Video and audio recorders will be provided in Leiden, but participants are invited to bring their own cameras if they prefer so. In case using your own laptop is not possible, please inquire with us about using University equipment. In case of an online format, video and audio equipment will have to be self-supplied as well as editing laptops.

Apply

To apply for selection, please send a one-page CV and a letter of interest of max 500 words before Friday 27th August, stating why you and your research plans would benefit from the project’s research toolkit, to foodcitizens@fsw.leidenuniv.nl. For inquiries we are available at the same email until 29th July 2021. Please note that due to holidays, we will check this email only once a week after that date. Selections will take place in September.

Participation in the winter school does not constitute enrolment at the University of Leiden and cannot be claimed to gain any rights, such as student visas, admission to the country, use of the University library or admission to University buildings other than the ones designated for the winter school activities.

Website: https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/foodcitizens/about/winter-school-call

Info: Maria Vasile (m.vasile@fsw.leidenuniv.nl)