Browse Expertise
Search expertsYou may enter information in more than one field.
| Daniela Vavrova
Adjunct/associate Researcher
The Cairns Institute and the College of Arts, Society and Education
James Cook University (Australia)
Website(s):
[ http://rachel.reflectangulo.net ]
I speak in the following language(s): English, Slovak, Tok Pisin, Czech, German, Spanish
|
 |
Specialities |
|
Discipline(s) |
Anthropology
|
Member of |
European Society for Oceanists (ESfO)  Australian Anthropological Society (AAS) |
Geographic administrative areas |
|
Geographic places |
Melanesia
|
Indigenous languages |
Tok Pisin |
Experiences |
PhD Research (2010 to 2014)
'Skin has Eyes and Ears' - Audiovisual Ethnography in a Sepik Society — James Cook University, The Cairns Institute and the College of Art, Society, and Education
My PhD thesis is based on several visits and a year of fieldwork in Ambonwari
village of East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. It deploys audio-visual
methods to explore how people shape, and are shaped by, their social and cultural
environment through their sensory experience. I focus on the visible arɨm ‘skin,
body’ and the invisible wambung ‘insideness, understanding’, as the main sources
of people’s experience. My aim was not simply to explore these Ambonwari
understandings of experience but to follow insights derived from Maurice Merleau-
Ponty and David MacDougall, among others, in order to understand the reciprocal
function of these sensory engagements as ways of knowledge. I chose to have the
camera as a mediator in my research and a catalyst for an ‘exchange of vision’
between myself and the Ambonwari. I discuss the possibility of seeing the invisible
by changing one’s skin and I take my audio-visual material, Ambonwari recordings,
and our public film screenings to explore this concept. Both, in the text and in the
audio-visual material, I highlight how Ambonwari concepts of ‘skin’ and
‘insideness’, and the seen and the invisible, structured their experience of film
viewing and filmmaking. In doing this I outline an approach to visual ethnography
that stresses the sensual properties of the Ambonwari visual experience.Collaborative Project (2013 to present)
ALTAR - Anthropological Laboratory for Tropical Audiovisual Research — James Cook University, The Cairns Institute and the College of Art, Society, and Education
https://www.jcu.edu.au/the-cairns-institute/about-the-cairns-institute/altar
https://espaces.edu.au/altar |
| Member's corner
Scholars and specialists on Pacific Studies are invited to create an account and make their profile and expertise available to the public.
Create an account
Some figures...The database of experts counts today 1236 profiles, of which 593 are publicly accessible, while 643 have chosen to remain private. These persons have defined 747 unique keywords in which they situate their research interests and expertise. They have also defined and described 649 ' experiences' (research and teaching activities, consulting work, or applied projects) in which they have contributed. | |
