As culturally contingent social constructs, embodied emotions are mutually constitutive of lived experience, forms of sociality, and intersubjective meaning-making, not to mention the ethnographic endeavour itself. In the study of (im)mobilities, recent anthropological research interrogates the feelings stirred by movement across multiple modes, scales, and temporalities, as well as by stasis: in stillness, stuckedness, and waiting. Questions of agency, freedom, rights, equity, and justice are evoked as bodies move through space, are prevented from doing so, or are re-moved, as exemplified by the drawing of fraught distinctions between “voluntary” versus “forced” movement. Taken together, affective and embodied experiences are being increasingly recognised as central to social, political, economic, and moral domains of life.
Emotions are intertwined with (im)mobility, not least because they produce what are termed affective publics. Feelings of closeness or distance, belonging or exclusion, comradery or alienation are generated as bodies are read and emotional styles are prescribed through patriarchal and racialised registers. Careful attention to such dynamics as well as to the manifold ways in which we are implicated in them is therefore not only part of our mandate as researchers, but is also our responsibility as human beings living through a global polycrisis. As the horrors in the Mediterranean, Palestine, Sudan, and beyond unfold and reach us on our many screens, and as climate breakdown continues at an alarming pace, we must refuse the role of the disembodied, distanced spectator. What are we, as anthropologists, equipped to offer publics as we also feel our ways through such a moment? How might we re-envision our collective task now, as those involved in the (re)construction, (re)presentation, and (re)circulation of deeply emotional stories of suffering and loss, on the one hand, and solidarity and hope, on the other?
This international workshop on 11-12 September 2025, organised by the EASA AnthroMob network in collaboration with the LDE Centre for Governance of Migration and Diversity will bring participants together in The Hague to explore how bodies, embodiment, and emotions can productively relate to the study of (im)mobilities. We warmly invite submissions for both in-person and online participation addressing these themes through oral presentations as well as multimodal and interactive formats. We welcome scholars working on these topics within or beyond mobility and migration studies, particularly those who are situated within anthropology and/or engage in ethnographic research. Submissions from PhD researchers and early career scholars are encouraged. Limited funding is available to support travel costs and will be made available to researchers without institutional funding on a case by case basis, prioritising scholars based in the Global South/Majority World.
Submission process
Please send a description (maximum 250 words) of your proposed contribution to anthromob@outlook.com by 28 February, 2025. Please indicate in your email whether you would like to present in person or online and whether you plan to request funding from AnthroMob to help cover your travel costs.
We will send you an email to confirm that we have received your submission.
We will let you know by 14 March, 2025 if your submission has been accepted.
Feel free to contact the workshop convenors with any questions that you may have about the event or submission process:
Elise Hjalmarson (elisehjalmarson@gmail.com)
Sonja Faaren Ruud (sonjafaaren.ruud@kuleuven.be)
Mirjam Twigt (m.a.twigt@hum.leidenuniv.nl)