Mikal Giancola, Anna Kirah, and Eve Pinsker
The value of ethnographic methods for the listening and understanding phases of systemic design and related methodologies such as Sharpe’s Three Horizons and developmental evaluation provide context for questions related to the value of participant observation conducted in teams vs. individual investigators, integrating observation with interviews and other data, and what sources for ethnographic methodology systemic designers have found useful, e.g. organizational ethnography, design ethnography, or rapid ethnographic assessment as used in public health or rural development. Additional questions include the range of “participation” in participatory ethnographic methods and the role of participatory approaches not just in data collection during the listening phase but also in utilising participatory modes of analysis for the understanding phase.
The discussion takes place in an online roundtable format and in an interactive format during the in-person sessions @OsloMet. In both versions, the facilitators guide the process and draw on participants to comment on their own experiences and sources for ethnographic methodologies. Participants in the in-person session will be asked to make observations in nearby cafes or public spaces during the lunch break prior to the session and share brief notes to ground the interactive discussion.
Facilitators
Mikal Giancola conducted a dissertation project using the Three Horizons framework to structure data collection and analysis of short-term time-limited participant observation and intercept interviews conducted in three farmers’ market sites in Southern Louisiana within the context of the local food system. https://www.linkedin.com/in/mackgiancola/
Anna Kirah is a design anthropologist who has led projects across multiple sectors including software development, travel, transport, retail, finance, health, the public sector and governmental policy design. www.kristiania.no/…/ anna-kirah/
Eve Pinsker is an anthropologist who conducted long-term immersion ethnographic fieldwork at multiple levels of political community (village, ethnic, state, national) in the Federated States of Micronesia for her dissertation, followed by many years of experience using modified short-term ethnographic methods for evaluation and developmental evaluation projects, collecting and analyzing information on contexts of interest and developing recommendations for action.