Multimodal Interrogations of Anthropologically Unintended Media

Prof. Samuel G. Collins + Prof. Matthew S. Durington (March 25, 2025)

This public talk marks the first public engagement of the book, “Multimodal Methods in Anthropology” (Routledge 2024) by Prof. Samuel Collins and Prof. Matthew Durington (Towson University). In this talk, they us draw us deeper into the pages of the book to look at the broader understanding of the multimodal to set us all on a steading footing with what it means to use media in anthropology and when we engage in collaborations. As they show in this talk, anthropology has always been about engaging with various media, from drawings, photographs and film to the digital platforms that support much of ethnographic work today. Much of that work, however, has been effectively invisible, with only the written monograph or the ethnographic film surviving as the “official” record of anthropological research. But what happens when we work in collaborative ways to create media? Things become a lot more complex, blurring the edges of anthropologist and community and raising questions about what anthropology has been and what it can be.

Samuel Collins is a professor of anthropology at Towson University. His research includes urban studies, social media, design anthropology, and information technologies in South Korea and in the United States. He is the author of All Tomorrow’s Cultures: Anthropological Engagements With the Future, and co-author (with Matthew Durington) of Multimodal Methods in Anthropology. 

Matthew Durington is a professor of anthropology at Towson University. His research includes multimodal anthropology, urban studies, drug culture, and the anthropology of South Africa. He is the co-author with Sam Collins of Networked Anthropology and Multimodal Methods in Anthropology. He is the faculty director for Community Engagement and Partnerships at Towson University.

Please contact fiona.mcdonald@ubc.ca if you have any questions or require a transcript.