Author: Simon
Simon , March 7th, 2020
Back in 2016 the very talented Charlotte Hollands was commissioned by EPIC to do a profile of me. Instead of writing an account of my career she decided…
Simon , July 21st, 2015
Some thoughtful commentary on job hunting by Amy Santee, a UX researcher based in USA provoked me to dig out this blog post from 2005. I wrote it…
Simon , June 10th, 2014
From an article about the anxieties of big data by Microsoft researcher Kate Crawford. 2014 is the year we learned about Squeaky Dolphin. That’s the Pynchon-worthy code name…
Simon , May 20th, 2014
“Nowadays being an explorer is a trade, which consists not, as one may think, in discovering hitherto unknown facts after years of study, but in covering a great…
Simon , March 22nd, 2014
“Anthropology provides a kind of thick description that contextualises design processes and products, and design offers anthropology creative means of exploring and representing what it means to…
Simon , February 10th, 2014
“Material thing are often like that. They have a certain humility. They jump up and down and confronts you as a critical symbols of yourself or your relationships….
Simon , November 30th, 2013
For those who attended the “Why the world needs anthropologists” symposium in Amsterdam yesterday here are the slides. For those that didn’t attend I hope the notes with…
Simon , November 8th, 2013
Re-reading a chapter in Marshall Sahlins’ Culture and Practical Reason, Le Penseé Bourgoisie today I could have cited multiple chunks of though-provoking writing. Instead, here’s a simple …
Simon , October 14th, 2013
I’m looking forward to speaking at this event in Amsterdam this autumn. The outline of my talk is below. ‘That full complement of riches’: the future role of anthropology in…
Simon , October 7th, 2013
This is a piece of writing about writing. The original aim was simply to explore the thought that writing diaries, writing anthropological fieldnotes and maintaining blogs are activities…
Simon , September 24th, 2013
[This post is a little longer than initially planned – it’s about a 15 minutes read] It was of little surprise that big data figured as a major…
Simon , August 13th, 2013
When the FT Magazine did a special issue on visual design anthropologist Gillian Tett opted to highlight the influential thinking of Pierre Bourdieu and his concept of doxa…
Simon , February 11th, 2013
EPIC 2013, London 15th-18th September EPIC 2013 is coming. The Call is out and can be found here. Tickets will be going on sale in March.
Simon , January 14th, 2013
From a great review of Jared Diamond’s book The World until Yesterday, by Wade Davis in The Guardian “Traditional societies do not exist to help us tweak our…
Simon , October 19th, 2012
Some pictures of EPIC 2012 which was held in Savannah and which, as co-chair, I am too fatigued to write about but here are just a few of…
Simon , July 24th, 2012
Thanks to the Wayback machine I found an old post I wrote on kinship and social networks from Ideas Bazaar (2004 vintage). I’m in the midst of writing something…
Simon , May 7th, 2012
There’s probably no one better placed that Danny Miller to answer this question:
Simon , March 28th, 2012
Couple of years old now but well worth watching in full – Gillian Tett, Managing Editor of the FT in the US addresses the 2010 AAA on “Silence…
Simon , March 21st, 2012
I gave a talk last week at a UK UPA event on ethnography in design and innovation. I somewhat subverted the intent of the session by not talking…