Ways of Thinking & Doing Ep. 3: Ethnographic and Photographic Inquiries

Webinar with Dr. Andrea Ballestero (the Ethnography Studio, University of Southern California), Naima Hassan (SITAAD) and Leyla Degan (SITAAD).

As the world continues to tear itself apart along lines of race, nation and ethnicity, feeding the divide that colonial and capitalist orders have historically enabled, how do we think about moving forward as collaborators, partners and friends in research practice? Thinking through various black and brown scholars and artists who have worked on notions of race and emancipation through archival and collaborative work, this webinar seeks to inquire and reflect on ways of doing research that inform grounded political engagements. In line with previous episodes, this conversation will look at research methods that disturb larger disciplinary practices through creating space for ethnographic and photographic inquiries. What does it mean to build spaces for co-production of critical knowledge and what methodological orientation do such spaces take? How does one build with and through communities and histories? What can we learn from transnational/transdisciplinary approaches to academic and artistic research? The third edition to the webinar series titled “Ways of Thinking and Doing” will further these questions in an engaged conversation between Dr. Andrea Ballestero, Naima Hassan and Leyla Degan.

Short Film Screening: Oral History Letter: Hawa S. on the Photographic Cultures of Mogadiscio (2024). Film by SITAAD.

Participants

Dr. Andrea Ballestero

 Dr. Andrea Ballestero is an anthropologist interested in political and legal anthropology, STS, and social studies of finance and economics. She is a faculty member in the Anthropology Department at USC. Her work looks at the unexpected ethical and technical entanglements through which experts understand water in Latin America. Among many other accolades to her name, she is also the author of A Future History of Water (Duke University Press 2019) and is director of the Ethnography Studio at USC.

Naima Hassan

Naima Hassan is a Berlin-based researcher working across archival, curatorial, and editorial practices. Her work focuses on building transnational and epistemic infrastructures for African and Afro-diasporic art and cultural archives, engaging the public with these collections as sites for research, collaboration, and critical intervention. She is Managing Editor of Contemporary And (C&) Magazine and Project Lead at Guest Artists Space (G.A.S.) Foundation and Yinka Shonibare Foundation, where she leads the AAL Lab and Affiliates Network and the Re:assemblages programme. She has contributed to international research networks, including TheMuseumsLab (Steering Board, 2023–25) and the Nieuwe Instituut’s New Currents: Indian Ocean Futures Working Group (2024–25). Hassan co-directs SITAAD with Leyla Degan, an archival platform founded in 2022 that experiments with analogue methods, collective research, and site-specific interventions within (post)colonial archives.

Leyla Degan

Leyla Degan is a Somali-Italian based artist and researcher based in Milan. She works across the borders of photography archives, visual arts and field research. She focuses her practice on colonial archives and restitution in relation to Somalia, with an emphasis on Somali women as the point of her research. In 2023 she was an artist-archivist in residence at the Black History Month in Florence at Numeroventi held by The Recovery Plan/YGBI. She later exhibited at the Acre Hub and in 2024 exhibited her works Habaryar and Intaan Noohalay as part of Curating Black Art in Italy at Soho House in Rome. She is a graduate of MA Photography Archiving and New Media at Bauer, Milan School of Design and Photography. Degan co-directs SITAAD with Naima Hassan, an archival platform founded in 2022 that experiments with analogue methods, collective research, and site-specific interventions within (post)colonial archives.

Series Curator: Ali Samoo (Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture)

Ali is currently teaching Comparative Urbanisms at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture in Karachi, Pakistan. Ali is also an incoming doctoral student in anthropology at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Their current research work looks at the afterlives of waste in the Global South. Ali is also co-founder of Fateh Point Archives and is working on various film and essay projects concerning urban development, migration and climate change across cities in South Asia.