Unwriting Academia
Exploring Multimodal Writing in Social Research
Conférence
5 February 2026, 9h-17h
Room 2B, Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taipei
An event co-organised by the French Center for Research on Contemporary China (CEFC Taipei) and the Research Institute on Contemporary Southeast Asia (IRASEC)
Download the programme :
Across the social sciences, scholars are increasingly engaging with creative and multimodal forms of knowledge production. At this workshop, participants will discuss their work with comics, video-making, film programming, artists’ residencies, literary ethnography, podcasts, and other inventive approaches to research and writing. These practices open possibilities that exceed the boundaries of traditional academic prose—not only methodologically, but also epistemologically—by offering new ways of apprehending and conveying social experiences. The aim of this workshop is to explore how such alternative forms of writing and representation can meaningfully coexist with, and even enhance, conventional scholarly outputs. Rather than treating creative modalities as add-ons or outreach tools, we seek to understand how they can transform the very processes through which we analyze, interpret, and communicate research. What do these forms allow us to know, sense, or reveal that standard academic texts cannot ? How might multimodal experimentation reshape our analytical practices, ethical commitments, and engagements with wider publics ? By bringing together scholars who are already experimenting with these practices, the workshop invites a collective reflection on the methodological and epistemological contributions of creative research. Our goal is to imagine how a richer plurality of writing modes can deepen our understanding of the social world and broaden the ways we participate in scholarly conversation.
Organisers
- Jérémy Jammes, IRASEC
- Corrado Neri, CEFC Taipei
- Beatrice Zani, CNRS
Speakers
- Valentine Boucq
- Yin C. Chuang, Taiwan Normal University
- Alex Desmules, Tianma Project
- Morgan Fraisse-László, French Office in Taipiei (BFT)
- Emilie ‘Emy’ Garcia
- Wafa Ghermani, National Central University (Taiwan)
- Jérémy Jammes, IRASEC
- James Lee, Academia Sinica
- Corrado Neri, CEFC Taipei
- Chang Wen-chin, Academia Sinica
- Beatrice Zani, CNRS
