Animating the Future: Visual Ethnographies of the Beyond
Friday 20 February 2026, 12pm
Pitt Rivers Museum Lecture Theatre (entry via Robinson Close)
Camilla Morelli (University of Bristol)
This paper examines how anthropology can transcend the everyday and reach into what lies beyond – the imagined, the aspirational, the surreal, and the yet-to-come. Drawing on research with children and young people in Amazonia, I introduce a methodological and theoretical framework based on coproduction of ethnographic animation: animated films that bring together people’s lived experiences with imaginary futures and ancestral pasts. I examine ethnographic animation both as a research method to explore nonverbal experience, and as a transformative practice through which the participants begin to inhabit alternative futures. I thereby propose an applied, future-oriented anthropology – one where the coproduction of visual knowledge can actively shape new ways of seeing and living in the world.
Pitt Rivers Museum Research Seminar in Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology, Hilary Term 2026
Fridays, 12pm-1.30pm (Weeks 1-8)
In person at the Pitt Rivers Museum Lecture Theatre (entry via Robinson Close).
