Rik Adriaans
Lecturer in Media Anthropology
Rik Adriaans
Born and raised in the town of Amersfoort, the Netherlands, I studied Anthropology for both my undergrads and masters at the University of Amsterdam and obtained my PhD at the Central European University in Budapest in September 2018. Before deciding to become an academic, I attempted to make a career as an electronic musician or sound designer, at which I failed miserably.
Broadly speaking, I am interested in questions of media and mediation, music and post-socialism with a regional focus on Armenia and the global Armenian diaspora. My PhD thesis was a multi-sited ethnography of the media circuits connecting the Armenian diaspora of Los Angeles to post-Soviet transition focusing on the politics of recognition and redistribution. I have also engaged in the study of folk dance performances in protests and post-socialist debates on music and taste in Armenia.
More recently, I began conducting a research project titled Patching Publics: A Digital Ethnography of Eurorack Modular Synthesis which is a study of the production and circulation of boutique synthesizer modules. This project looks at the dematerialisation and rematerialisation of music hardware in a post-digital era in which the analog and the digital are increasingly interwoven.
Teaching
Since 2019 I have been teaching on the MSc Digital Anthropology. Since my appointment as a Lecturer in Media Anthropology in 2021, I am primarily teaching on the new interdisciplinary Media BA hosted by the Culture, Communication and Media department of UCL's Institute of Education. Currently I teach two modules on this program: CCME0143 Digital Cultures and Society (Year 1) and ANTH0168 Digital Practices in Society (Year 2 Media and Year 3 Anthropology).
CCME0143 Digital Cultures and Society (Year 1) is a broad introduction to social science research methods and thematic perspectives in digital anthropology, covering subjects such as virtual worlds, embodiment, social media and algorithms. In ANTH0168 Digital Practices in Society (Year 2 Media and Year 3 Anthropology), students develop an individual research project that focuses on a digital practice of their choice, combining digital ethnography, multi-sensory methods, and practice theory.
Both of these modules are guided by my teaching philosophy which centers on making students ethnographers of their own digitally mediated life-worlds. As a discipline, anthropology questions taken-for-granted perspectives on the world, and helps us appreciate a diversity of ways of being. In my BA Media modules, students are encouraged to experiment with bringing their media production skills into dialogue with anthropological research to develop their personal angle on digital culture.
Projects
With Annastiina Kallius (University of Helsinki) I have conducted a study of Hungarian liberalism through the lens of the internet memes that parody the country's illiberal regime. We recently published our findings in the article 'The Meme Radar: Locating Liberalism in Illiberal Hungary' which came out in Cultural Anthropology in November 2022.
https://journal.culanth.org/index.php/ca/article/view/4567
As part of my current research project Patching Publics: A Digital Ethnography of Eurorack Modular Synthesis, I maintain an Instagram account on which I share audiovisual materials from my visits to synthesizer DIY events, the workshops of manufacturers, as well as my own musical experiments.
https://www.instagram.com/otaromodularo/
