Curated Workshops, Events and Collaborations
From 1-4 September 2026, I am organizing a four-day workshop for doctoral students at the University of Helsinki called “From Fieldnotes to Life History Narrative: Writing, Memoir and Visual Storytelling“. Collaborating alongside anthropologist Kirin Narayan, author and bookmaker, Wah-Ming Chang, and documentary filmmaker, Solveig Qu-Seuss, together we will provide doctoral researchers the tools necessary to bring their empirical research to life. Click here to learn more about the event and registration.
2026 started with a bang! In January, I organised a two-day constellational gathering at a small artists space called Accent Sisters (重音姐妹) in New York City. The event was called “Archives of Longing”. It was such a joy to work with long-term academic collaborators anthropologist Fred Lai and art-historian Jenny Lee, while also bringing in a new collaborator, writer and bookmaker Wah-Ming Chang. The four of us came together in a non-academic space, setting our intellectual voices aside and allowing a more creative voice to emerge. Through family history, and the voids around them, we explored different threads of Chinese biographies as a way of gathering a different kind of archive – those shaped by longing.
I closed 2024 by organizing a thought-provoking event at Beijing’s Bye-bye Disco 夜谈 // Late Night Sessions called “Through the Eyes of an Anthropologist” (以人类学家的视角). Open to the Chinese public, the sold-out event included presentations by anthropologist He Beili 何贝莉 and myself with Zhang Lisheng as the evening’s moderator. For a summary, please follow this link.
Earlier in the year, in June 2024, I invited a collection of seven scholars all working on China to participate in the “History, Nostalgia and Futurabilities” workshop. The aim of the workshop was to address and capture the messiness, the fragments and multivocality of the past, present and possible futures/futurabilities among China’s Others. The workshop was inspiring and eye-opening! The tools we have to record, express and communicate our findings are boundless — as I was reminded by the diverse range of methods & output that people brought with them— from textual narrative, to ethnographic film, old photos, musical notes and even block prints.
Invited Lectures and Book Talks
I’ve given multiple book talks at academic settings, including at the University of Edinburgh and at the School of Oriental and African Studies in 2025, and Birmingham and Durham University in 2024.
Between 2022 and 2026, I have been invited to give lectures at numerous universities, including the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Syracuse University, Columbia University Modern China Seminar, York University Toronto, Indiana University, Wesleyan University and City University New York.
SUVI RAUTIO 