Drawing together as ethnographic analysis
In their article Drawing together: Sketching a multimodal collaborative ethnography, MEAM members Hanna Charlotta Wernersson and Simone de Boer introduce and reflect on collaborative drawing between researchers as a methodology for multimodal ethnographic analysis. Inspired by the children’s game ‘back-and-forth drawing’, they sent two sheets of papers (one for drawing and one for writing) back and forth between them using old-fashioned snail mail. Taking turns, adding drawn and written reflections, and responding to those of the other, they explored what drawing and writing together could do for them as they tried to make sense of an empirical phenomenon they had both encountered in their respective PhD fieldwork. Co-drawing became a simultaneous act of co-creating and thinking through an ethnographic place on papers and between them: a shared space of multisensory expression and inquiry that helped them generate insights, stay with the process of analysis, and reflect upon their (shared) researcher-selves. In their article, Hanna and Simone use co-drawing as a case to argue for collaborative and multimodal forms of research to explore other cognitive pathways and pluralise knowledge-making, while committing to research as a relational practice.
Simone and Hanna are both PhD candidates at the School of Global Studies, Gothenburg University. Throughout their PhD journeys, they have explored different modes of working together creatively across their individual research projects on regenerative farming in Sweden (Hanna) and organic/permaculture farming in Kyrgyzstan (Simone).
