The one-day conference event “Podcasts and Other Experiments in Public Anthropology” (Podcasts και Άλλα Πειράματα Δημόσιας Ανθρωπολογίας) took place at the Rooftile and Brickworks Museum N. & S. Tsalapatas in Volos on October 9, 2021, from 11:00 am to 18:00 pm.

The event was an opportunity to discuss the possibilities offered by the podcast format for creative and critical investigations of the social and for public intervention in topics of contemporary political concern.

The conference was built around the public presentation of podcasts developed by students in the undergraduate University of Thessaly course Anthropology of Death (instructor: Penelope Papailias). The podcasts covered a wide range of topics of global, national and international affairs related to the politics of death and mourning, including topics like femicide and the prohibition of abortion, the Black Lives Matter movement and deaths in the context of migration policies. There were also podcasts commenting on popular TV shows related to deaths caused by social media hatred, and finally topics about mourning and burial during the Covid-19 pandemic. The podcasts are all available on Spotify.

These student presentations were framed by discussions about public anthropology, multimodal ethnography and socially-engaged journalism by graduate students, professors and our keynote speaker.

The conference was divided into three panels on: 1) podcasts as pedagogical tools 2) the use of podcasts by social movements as a mode of protest and 3) podcasts as methodological and interpretive tools of multimodal anthropology and as a means for the dissemination of academic knowledge in the context of public anthropology.

The conference closed with a speech by our keynote speaker, Aris Chatzistefanou, a well-known Greek journalist and documentary producer, considered the first Greek podcaster. He discussed his experience in producing podcasts as means of journalism, but also of activism.

This event was organized by Penelope Papailias, Penny Paspali and Pantelis Probonas.

Collaborating organizations included the Laboratory of Social Anthropology of the University of Thessaly and the Pelion Summer Lab for Cultural Theory and Experimental Humanities.