Professor Sarah Pink
Affiliation: Monash University
Discipline: Anthropology
Year elected: 2019
What initially drew you to your field of study?
Anthropology and documentary filmmaking offered me the exciting combination of meeting and learning from people across the world and developing a creative practice. My PhD, about women and bullfighting in Spain, was a fantastic introduction to public engagement, and inspired a career in which I’ve brought together rigorous academic scholarship with engagement and interdisciplinary collaboration across Australia, the United Kingdom, Europe, South East Asia and Latin America.
What role do the social sciences play in your work?
The social sciences help me in everything I do; an anthropological sensibility supports me in understanding people and situations, in collaboration outside academia and in understanding and taking an ethical stance. I believe that my training in anthropology also helps me to collaborate with other disciplines, to seek to understand the logics guiding the work of researchers from very different fields and consider how diverse knowledge systems can connect.
What should your field of study be doing more of right now?
Right now we should be engaging with institutional initiatives to better understand futures. As we face new uncertainties, what some call a “polycrisis” institutions are turning to foresight and even artificial intelligence to help them make decisions about our futures; as I’ve argued in my recent article on “Futures Anthropology for the Polycrisis” (available here) we need to ensure rigorous social science futures knowledge is available, accessible and influential.
How would you describe your work at a dinner party?
I’ve been known to say something like: “I’m an anthropologist and filmmaker, but I don’t study bones! My work is about futures and I’m researching how we will live in 2030 and 2050”. Sometimes I also mention my PhD was about bullfighting. People are usually curious.
What are you most proud of?
I founded the Emerging Technologies Lab – a social science and design research unit – in 2018. Over the last seven years we’ve grown from six to well over thirty members and collaborated globally with research partners from academia and across diverse sectors; I’m exceptionally proud of all members of our vibrant diverse international community for their participation in and sustenance of our research environment and for the futures-focused research agenda we’re growing.
Where is your desert island book, song or movie??
I’d find it too hard to choose so I think I’d take my laptop, camera and solar panels for energy, so I can write my own book and make a documentary about multispecies desert island life once I get there.