Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology SAS
Topic
Fragile convivialities: sensory and affective ecologies in mountain pastoral worlds
PhD. program
World Cultures and Religions, Faculty of Arts, Comenius University
Year of admission
2026
Name of the supervisor
Mgr., MgA. Jaroslava Panáková, PhD.
Contact:
Receiving school
Filozofická fakulta UK
Annotation
This PhD project examines sensory and affective forms of ecological knowledge in multispecies grassland environments, focusing on how farmers and other rural actors perceive, evaluate, and act upon relationships among diverse human and non-human actors under conditions of ecological change and uncertainty. Rather than presupposing a single focal species or scale, the project allows students to explore how ecological processes become intelligible through sensory perception and affective judgement, including smell, sight, touch, taste, rhythm, trust, concern, pleasure, or unease.
The project investigates how such sensory–affective evaluations function as practical epistemic tools in everyday decision-making related to animal husbandry, plant management, soil care, hygiene, feeding practices, or landscape stewardship. Students may choose to focus on microbial processes, animal relations, plant ecologies, or other forms of more-than-human interaction, examining how invisible, ambiguous, or emergent ecological dynamics are recognised and categorised through sensorially mediated distinctions such as good or bad, safe or risky, healthy or disturbed. Empirically, the research is grounded in long-term ethnographic fieldwork in grassland landscapes, preferably in the Carpathians, combining participant observation with interviews, sensory elicitation, and experimental methods drawn from sensory anthropology and cognitive studies. An ethnohistorical perspective based on archival materials may complement contemporary fieldwork. The project contributes to anthropological debates on sensory knowledge, multispecies relations, and ecological expertise. It may include an applied strand exploring how locally grounded sensory knowledge can inform grassland restoration and biodiversity enhancement.
The project investigates how such sensory–affective evaluations function as practical epistemic tools in everyday decision-making related to animal husbandry, plant management, soil care, hygiene, feeding practices, or landscape stewardship. Students may choose to focus on microbial processes, animal relations, plant ecologies, or other forms of more-than-human interaction, examining how invisible, ambiguous, or emergent ecological dynamics are recognised and categorised through sensorially mediated distinctions such as good or bad, safe or risky, healthy or disturbed. Empirically, the research is grounded in long-term ethnographic fieldwork in grassland landscapes, preferably in the Carpathians, combining participant observation with interviews, sensory elicitation, and experimental methods drawn from sensory anthropology and cognitive studies. An ethnohistorical perspective based on archival materials may complement contemporary fieldwork. The project contributes to anthropological debates on sensory knowledge, multispecies relations, and ecological expertise. It may include an applied strand exploring how locally grounded sensory knowledge can inform grassland restoration and biodiversity enhancement.