leidenanthropologyblog

Sander is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology.

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Rolling warm-ups, or writing up a book as if it were a skate session

Academia has systems to control knowledge production to safeguard its claims. But these systems need not control our playful criticality. Writing ethnographic texts as if they were a skate session may be a tactic that resists logics of restraint – carving out space for play amongst academic rigour.

Sander Hölsgens and Brian Glenney • October 07, 2024

Zine-making in Leiden: workshops on experimental print publications

Can academia still be fun and experimental? Maybe it can with the printing, folding, and collage techniques of zines. In two hands-on workshops, Sander Hölsgens and James McGrail aimed to find out. In this blog they discuss what they learned, and how zines can become a useful part of an anthropologist’s toolkit.

Sander Hölsgens and James McGrail • January 26, 2024 • 1 comment

When all positives are false: the emergence of an academic whodunnit

Many educators accept the idea that we need to systematically assess the performance of our students. Easily accessible writing tools complicate the practice of assessment: how do we gauge whether an assignment is original work? In the age of AI, academic integrity is at stake – or so we’re told.

Sander Hölsgens and John Boy • May 12, 2023

Towards a technical pedagogy

A coalition of educators believes that ChatGPT will kill the essay. But should we really fear the algorithms used in large language models? Anthropology has the generative potential to re-evaluate teaching practices that attend to the use of emergent technologies in the classroom.

Sander Hölsgens • January 10, 2023

We need to talk about skateboarding

Skateboarding is a skilful practice, a discipline of failure, and a global culture. Sander Hölsgens studies skateboarding as a tool for social good and reflects on three socio-political interventions by skaters in the Netherlands.

Sander Hölsgens • May 11, 2022