Public Ethnography

What is public ethnography?

What is public ethnography? What do public ethnographers hope to achieve? What are their challenges? In this video by ABARI and Capilano University faculty member and Gemini Award winner Dwayne Beaver, public ethnography and its multiple variations--from visual ethnography, to action research, collaborative ethnography, sensory ethnography, narrative scholarship, multimodal ethnography, and much more--are the subjects of reflection of delegates of the 2012 Victoria, BC, Public Ethnography conference.


Ethnographic Research Reaching Multiple Venues

Life Off Grid

An aim of public ethnography is making academic research available to public audiences in a variety of ways. The film project Life Off Grid did just that. The film screened at film festivals and is now available through Video on Demand.

Public Ethnography as Innovative Learning

Can coursework go beyond the classroom? Can students’ research go public? We believe it can. From eye-catching HD documentary videos to photography, from captivating photovoice to magazine articles, and from informative websites to news media stories about their work, http://innovative-learning.publicethnography.net/ contains the latest and the most innovative student research projects to be found.

Popularizing Research


This book and companion website show how a group of researchers across many disciplines utilized old and new media to reach multiple audiences. Divided into nine parts (film, visual media and graphics, exhibits and installations, audio, periodicals, books and reports, dialogue, performance, and publicity) this book and website both show and tell how to make research more popular.

Innovative Ethnographies

“Innovative ethnographies” is a Routledge series that combines beautifully written hypermedia books with visual and audio material. What the book as a medium can’t show, the web can. Discover the latest published and forthcoming ethnographies across a variety of disciplines and fields and learn how innovative ethnographic representation can animate the lifeworld and better reach new reading and viewing publics.

Check out useful EMAC resources