Convenors
Liesbeth Huybrechts, Hasselt University
liesbeth.huybrechts@uhasselt.be
Cristiano Storni, University of Limerick
cristiano.storni@ul.ie
Chiara Bassetti, University of Trento
chiara.bassetti@unitn.it
«I cannot see how ethnography isn’t about how the world’s made and therefore how the world might be made differently» (Richard Harper)
This panel builds on one organised in ERQ2025 (Huybrechts & Storni, 2025) and further explores and discusses the role of ethnography in participatory research and design, in the context of contemporary socio-environmental challenges and «reworlding» endeavours. Through an international collaboration in the Doctoral Network project REWORLDING, the organisers of this panel have introduced the term «reworlding» (Huybrechts et al., 2022). It stresses the need to «unworld» ourselves from current, broken, unsustainable ways of living to explore and create alternative ways of being together, not only among humans, but also with non-humans (Grusin, 2015). In a meeting between disciplines of ethnography and participatory design, we foregrounded as one key capability to reworld that of «re-tracing», namely the careful act of capturing, registering and mapping the diverse, often silent, human and non-human actors, their worlds and interdependencies as foundational to explore novel conditions of co-existence.
With this concern in mind, we aim at exploring the role of ethnography in the practice of «re-tracing» by critically reflecting on how our traditional ways of observing, describing, and explaining are falling short for dealing with the enormity of factual information about our current socio-ecological crises, but also the affective displacement and the emotional denials that accompany our exposure to it (Todd, 2021). While we are all inextricably and persistently entangled, we know little about how to observe, grasp and describe these entanglements, and what this means for knowledge creation and for action in our common world.
Starting from this, we aim at investigating ethnographic approaches for careful observations and engagements that would enable us to better capture how we are all connected to one another, to shift and multiply viewpoints, to develop new sensibilities and frameworks for seeing and representing the world as multiple. We also aim at exploring how ethnography can be made participatory, what role the imaginative and tangible qualities of design can play in this, or what it means to share ethnographic knowledge and put it into action.
Open questions
- How to grasp, retrace and represent not only multiple but inherently diverse viewpoints?
- What are the means (including creative, design and art-based) for sharing ethnographically developed knowledge with diverse targets and publics?
- How an impact-producing interdisciplinary and intersectoral coalition, or alliance, could organize itself to gain insight in these multiple worldviews?
- And what an “actionable” ethnography could look like?
Keywords
ethnography; participatory design; participatory research; «reworlding»; retracing, entanglements, socio-environmental challenges
Sub-disciplines / cross-disciplinary areas
participatory design; participatory research; sociology of everyday life; collective action studies; organization studies; cultural studies
References
Huybrechts, L., Storni, C. (2025). Rethinking the role of ethnography in more-than-human participatory research and design. Ethnography and Qualitative Research International Conference – 10th edition. Trento.
Huybrechts, L., Zuljevic, M. Devisch, O., Tassinari,V., Seravalli, A., Light, A., De Blust, S. Panagiotis, A., Bassetti, C., Bidwell, N., Teli, M., Storni, C., Avram, G., Marshall, M. Majetic, F., Declerck, J. (2022) Reworlding: Participatory Design Capabilities to Tackle Socio-Environmental Challenges, in Proc.PDC’22
Grusin, R A. (ed.) (2015). The nonhuman turn. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Simonsen, Jesper; Svabo, Connie; Strandvad, Sara Malou; Samson, Kristine; Hertzum, Morten and Ole Erik Hansen. 2014. Situated Design Methods. MIT Press.
Todd, S. (2021). ‘Landing on Earth:’ an educational project for the present. A response to Vanessa Andreotti. _Ethics and Education_ 16 (2):159-163.
Convenors’ bio
Liesbeth Huybrechts is Professor in the areas of participatory design, design anthropology and socio-environmental transformation processes in the research group Civic and Policy Design, Arck, University of Hasselt, Belgium. She has developed a research interest in the design for/with participatory exchanges between human and the material/natural environment and the “politics” of designing these relations in just ways. She is editor of CoDesign journal, cooridnates the Reworlding Network (EU, Marie Curie) and is actively involved in several VLIR/UOS projects on Participatory Spatial Planning and Governance in Tanzania, Democratic Republic Congo and Cuba.
Cristiano Storni is Associate Professor and senior researcher in Interaction Design. He is the Director of the Interaction Design Centre in the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems in UL. His research lies at the intersection of Design (interaction, participatory) and social sciences (ethnography, science and technology studies, particularly Actor Network Theory – ANT) with a general interest in the relationship between technology and people in various domains: health, care and self-care, social innovation, neurodiversity and inclusion, and sustainability.
Chiara Bassetti is Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento, and Director of the Social Pattern Recognition Laboratory (SPaRe Lab). Expert in ethnography, ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, her focus rests on the performative, embodied and aesthetic aspects of interaction, and the role of artefacts and technologies, particularly at the workplace and in learning. Empirically, her research ranges from performing arts such as dance and music, to complex socio-technical systems such as medical emergency and airport security, to the home, mundane interaction and intimate relationships. She often works in interdisciplinary teams. She is Co-Editor in Chief of the journal Etnografia e Ricerca Qualitativa. Among recent publication, “Rhythm in and of Social Interaction: A Study in Intersubjectivity and Power” (in The Rise of Rhythm Studies, Bloomsbury, 2026).