Forum Talk: Artificial Immersion and Quantum Epistemology in Remote Ethnography: Preamble to An Upcoming Project on Xinjiang

2026-04-01 - 2026-05-31

Rune Steenberg (Senior Researcher, Palacky University, Olomouc)

online

🔸Discussant:

Darren Byler (International Studies, Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British
Columbia)

🔸Moderator： Allen Chun (International Center for Cultural Studies, NYCU)

🔸Date and Time： May 11, 2026 (Monday), 14:00-16:00 (GMT+8, Taiwan Time)

🔸Forum Language: English

🔸Format online: https://meet.google.com/nbo-ryxp-vyk

 

【Abstract】

The world is changing – also for researchers. Geo-political tensions, authoritarian tendencies, securitization and not least rapidly developing surveillance technology are posing new challenges for anthropologists and other social science and humanities researchers.Especially for those working on vulnerable communities or in contested parts of the world,the romanticized and colonial fantasy of ethnography research in an isolated village has long been dismantled. Now even on-the-ground access and person-to-person contact have become difficult and ethically risky in many regions. At the same time, new technical opportunities are also available to researchers and as contexts have always changed, adapting research approaches and methodology is not new. Faced with severely limited access to their field in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (aka East Turkestan) in the mid-2010s a group of researchers have worked on developing a new approach to studying the region from afar. This approach, which we here call Remote Ethnography, shall be presented in this talk along with some of its innovative and recycled core tools and principles such as Artificial Immersion and Quantum Epistemology. The approach is presented as an open tool box developed in relation to XUAR/ET but employable in many other contexts too and one to be further
developed, sharpened and expanded in dialogue with researchers across the globe. You are invited to listen, learn, be inspired but also to partake, discuss and contribute.

 

【Speaker】

Rune Steenberg is an anthropologist and human geographer based at Palacky University,Olomouc in Czechia. His work focuses on Uyghur culture, kinship, mass incarceration, and regional transformations. He has conducted extensive fieldwork in Xinjiang, China, and Central Asia. Rune has worked in Berlin, Bonn, New York and Copenhagen before joining Palacky University. For the past three years he led the Horizon Europe project’s Remote Ethnography of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and is now about to start an ERC project on kinship-state relations in XUAR. He also does freelance work as an interpreter for Uyghur, expert and researcher with film makers, journalists and human rights NGOs.

 

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Organizer:

Higher Education Sprout Project, Ministry of Education (MOE) in Taiwan

International Center for Cultural Studies, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (ICCS-NYCU) 

Sub-project I: The Geopolitics and Cultural Economy of Societal Relations in a New Greater China