Slide Background
GEM WP Template
Microethnography Lab
GEM WP Template

Welcome to the Microethnography Lab at Macquarie University

The microethnography lab in the School of Social Sciences supports digitally-enhanced observational field research, with a special focus on studying skills including intercultural skills, performance, perception, adaptive dispositions, habitus acquisition, and practical learning. Projects include research on work, music composition, martial arts like muay Thai and tai chi, sports including mountain biking, cricket, and informal sport, sensory perception including echolocation by the blind, Argentine tango, communities of practice in craft, sport, and field science, and spatial navigation. The researchers in the lab use rigorous qualitative and observational research techniques, especially using low-cost video and audio recordings and other widely-available tools to enhance our ethnographic research. Although the techniques can be used more broadly, we have a current focus on cognitive ecology, distributed cognition, social interaction research, and neuroanthropology.

The Microethnography Lab is currently facilitating the research for the project, “Concepts in Dynamic Assemblages: Cultural Evolution and the Human Way of Being,” funded by a major grant from the John Templeton Foundation. We also support partner-based research with businesses and non-governmental organisations.