A Collection of Creative Anthropologies: Drowning in Blue Light and Other Stories

A Collection of Creative Anthropologies brings together a series of creative work of anthropologists who share the art of writing that arises from ‘ordinary’ engagement and reveals its potential for the reimagining of anthropological futures and alternative worlds. This is a collection of creative anthropology anchored in experimentality and encouragement. A book that defies imaginaries of academic convention through the cultivation of a mundus imaginalis requiring moments of pause, of introspection, and of discomfort. This centring of creativity at the heart of anthropology subtly conveys how the complex ethical and moral issues around fieldwork and anthropological theorising can be reflected on through writing otherwise, in creative spaces such as this book. A Collection of Creative Anthropologies fits the current call for radical revisions of the academic canon in anthropology, and the social sciences and humanities more broadly.

Eva van Roekel is an anthropologist working at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her work focuses on ethics and violence in Latin America, particularly Argentina and Venezuela. Her scholarly work appeared in various anthropological and regional journals and her monograph Phenomenal Justice (RUP) engages with retributive justice through an affective lens. Feeling unfulfilled with academic genres, she started experimenting with creative writing and filmmaking, which resulted in various short story publications and documentaries screened at international film festivals. Together with Alisse Waterston and Fiona Murphy they launched the Ethnographic Salon in 2022, a novel space to perform creative anthropologies. She is also one of the co-founders of the EASA Creative Anthropologies Network (CAN).

Fiona Murphy is an anthropologist based in SALIS in Dublin City University. As an anthropologist of displacement, she works with Stolen Generations in Australia and people seeking asylum and refuge in Ireland, the United Kingdom and Turkey. She has a particular passion for creative and public anthropologies and is always interested in experimenting with new forms and genres. Alongside of her scholarly work, she has published shorts stories, poetry, and creative non-fiction across a number of different forums. She co-organised the successful Ethnographic Salon with Alisse Waterston and Eva van Roekel at EASA2022 in Belfast, which showcased creative work by anthropologists. She is one of the co-founders of the EASA Creative Anthropologies Network (CAN).