Course outcomes

On this page you find the outcomes of BA and MA courses which emerged from collaborative work processes of the students.

You find impressions of the various projects within the field schools in the BA and MA curriculum here: field school impressions

Vernissage "Collaborative Ethnography"

The opening of the exhibition"Collaborative Ethnography" took place on January 27th 2025. The exhibition was designed by MA Students of the department under the supervison of Sabrina Steindl-Kopf. It shows the results of collaborative work in which the research participants were actively involved in the research process and contributed to the production of knowledge as equal partners.

The student's aim of this exhibition is to make the jointly developed knowledge visible beyond pure text productions. They invite a reflective discussion of the exhibition content (reproductive self-determination, BIPoC students at the department and critical masulinities*)

You can visit the exhibition during the summer term 2025 in corridor A/D of the department.

Theater performance "My Anthropology: That's Anthropology - Performance"

On January 25, 2025, BA students presented their creative realizations, performative sketches and artistic translations based on ethnographic data. In a collaborative process, the theater stage was explored as a space for encounters between ethnography, theater performance and scenic storytelling.

The theater performance emerged from the course „Applied Anthropology and Theater“ under the supervision of Christa Markom and Myassa Kraitt. The aim was to make a part of the discussion of "being anthropological" visible through a different form of representation. The focus was on interdisciplinarity, ethics and responsibility as anthropologists. The main question was "Who are we as anthropologists?" In addition we asked ourselves "How can we translate this for the stage?"

By using techniques like storytelling, improvisation and forum theater, as well as team work and collaborative processes, the students have crossed the line between scientific thinking and artistic creation. The theater was understood as social field that served not only as artistic space but also as a place of political negotiation and mobilization in the sense of Frantz Fanon. Victor Turner's concept of social drama could be used here to illustrate how theater makes conflicts and social tensions visible and negotiates them. These performative processes offer space for reflection, but also for transformation.

CollAct - Collaborative Action Against Discrimination in Anthropology

CollAct emerged from the dynamic and collaborative course "Anti-discriminatory collaborative anthropology between students and teachers" in summer term 2024 under the supervision of Christa Markom. The course dealt intensively with the topic of discrimination.

It was the aim to create a space, where we could collect, document, share und reflect on our experiences together.

The exhibition invites everyone to participate in this transformative process. Designed as a traveling exhibition, CollAct is intended not only to provide insights, but also inspire other departments to also deal intensively with these important topics and to continue the exhibition.

In addition, we hope that such innovative courses will continue, in which collaboration is experienced as an experimental and constantly growing process. Our aim is to gradually dismantle university hierarchies and discrimination - from small structures to larger systems.

Digital exhibition: Politics of (In)visibility

In the summer terms 2022 and 2024 MA students of the department created experimental short films around the topic (in)visibilities within the seminar "Politics of (In)visibility" and under the supervision of Sanderien Verstappen.

As a background: In the first part of the course “Politics of (In)visibility”, students read theories and ethnographic case studies to think about diverse practices of seeing, showing, and concealing in the realm of the state, the media, and in the everyday life of people. From these readings, students chose a conceptual lens to conduct a small-scale research project into a collection of visual representation in the second part of the seminar.

Blog: Good Drugs Bad Drugs

In the seminar "Good Drugs - Bad Drugs. Substances and Subjects in Society" at the Institute for Social Anthropology, University of Bern (WS 2020) and under the supervision of Janina Kehr, students have studied "drugs" as fluid social substances, which have been an important field of research in medical anthropology for two decades. On this blog students present substance biographies that they have worked out in small groups. In summer term 2022 BA students of our department added new substances on the blog within a new edition of the seminar "Good Drugs - Bad Drugs. Substances and Subjects in Society".

virtual exhibition "Leichen im Keller"