– with Prof. Dr. Paula Bialski (University of St. Gallen & Weizenbaum Institute)
and Prof. Dr. Götz Bachmann (University of Siegen)
When: October 29, 2026, 10am-2pm
Where: Weizenbaum-Institute, Flexraum (A1_04), hybrid
Level: Intermediate
Seats: 15 on-site, 10 online, open for QPD
This workshop is organized by the Weizenbaum PhD Network “Research in Practice”, coordinated by Katharina Berr and Jana Heim, and supported by the Weizenbaum Methods Lab.
Abstract: This workshop invites all those interested in exploring how large language models, operating through chat interfaces, can be involved in the research process of ethnography. In the workshop, we will conduct a series of practical experiments, drawing on current debates about AI, ethnographic method, and anthropological pedagogy. The aim is not to celebrate AI as a solution, nor to reject it as a threat, but to explore what the involvement of AI can reveal about ethnographic work itself. The guiding question of the workshop is not only: How can AI make ethnographic work better — or worse? It is also: How can encounters with AI help us understand more precisely what ethnographic work does and how it operates?
Ethnography depends on situated attention, embodied experience, careful description, interpretation, and reflexivity. LLMs, by contrast, generate fluent text without having been in the field, without having met interlocutors or become entangled in real relationships with them, and without carrying responsibility for representation or for the truth claims they so readily produce. This tension is the starting point of the workshop. What happens when AI gets involved in our work with scribbles, fieldnotes, fragments, or research memos? How does this shape description, memory, interpretation, and analysis? What kinds of support does it offer — and where does it flatten, overinterpret, invent, or produce false coherence? What new forms of reflection become necessary and possible?
The workshop will be experimental and hands-on. Participants will work through a series of short exercises involving scribbles, diary writing, analytical interpretation, essay drafting, and reflection. We will examine how LLMs can act as interlocutors, critics, and writing partners, sometimes through deliberately assigned roles, while also asking how researchers can retain responsibility for what is generated, revised, accepted, or rejected. The workshop is especially relevant for doctoral researchers, ethnographers, qualitative researchers, and teachers interested in AI and methodology. Participants do not need advanced technical knowledge. They are invited to bring short excerpts from their own scribbles, fieldnotes, or research memos, although sample material can also be provided.
The workshop is part of an ongoing reflection on ethnographic pedagogy under AI conditions. It treats AI in ethnography not as a finished method or as a simple question of AI literacy, but as a strange device for experimenting with and making visible some of the tacit demands of ethnographic work: careful attention, situated judgment, accountable writing, and reflexive responsibility.
Prof. Dr. Paula Bialski is Associate Professor of Digital Sociology at University of St. Gallen and Associated Researcher at the Weizenbaum Institute in Berlin.
Prof. Dr. Götz Bachmann is Professor of Media Anthropology and Method Innovation at University of Siegen.