Hi AoIRists, Happy New Year! I wanted to let you know about this evening’s LSE Digital Ethnography Collective event as I think some of you will be interested. We will be hosting Rik Adriaans (UCL Digital Anthropology) for a talk titled Meme-Tinted Glasses: Locating the Liberal Self in Digital Postsocialism. Rik's talk will be followed by discussion of his work and broader issues around digital ethnographic research of visual culture. You can book a ticket here: https://red-otter-142.eventbritestudio.com/89591092369 As usual, we will also be livestreaming the event at 6pm GMT, which you can watch either live or later here: https://www.youtube.com/user/Zedstergal Talk info: During the 2010s, internet memes have solidified their place as a global vernacular. Challenging the digital dualism of offline and online, memes are increasingly referenced, reappropriated and performed in a wide range of settings beyond the scope of social media platforms. Drawing on examples from Hungary and Armenia, this presentation examines how memetic sensibilities have become central to the ways in which liberal youth orient themselves in the everyday politics of postsocialist transformations. It explores how perceived remnants of socialism and elements of the illiberal present are turned into a source of the liberal self by apprehending them through the ironic sensibilities of the internet meme form. No longer bound by digital devices such as smartphones, the memeification of reality is key to the everyday negotiation of dichotomies of capitalist modernity versus the socialist past, orient versus occident, as well as class antagonisms and rural-urban divisions. Rik Adriaans is a Teaching Fellow in Digital Anthropology at UCL Anthropology. He is interested in questions of media and mediation, (trans)nationalism, post-socialism and public culture with a regional focus on Armenia and the global Armenian diaspora. His doctoral thesis was a multi-sited ethnography of the media circuits connecting the Armenian diaspora of Los Angeles to post-Soviet transition. The LSE Digital Ethnography Collective hosts talks and workshops at LSE in London every fortnight (usually Mondays 6-7:30pm). If you are interested and would like to hear about future events, then you can join our mailing list (tinyurl.com/y5a6odte) and follow us on Twitter @DigEthnogLSE All the best, Zoe ________________________ Zoë Glatt www.zoeglatt.com<http://www.zoeglatt.com/> ESRC PhD Researcher in Media & Communications London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) Managing Editor: Communication, Culture & Critique Co-Founder: LSE Digital Ethnography Collective @DigEthnogLSE<https://twitter.com/DigEthnogLSE> Graduate Student Rep: Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) Associate Lecturer in Media & Communications (2019/20): Goldsmiths University YouTube channel<https://www.youtube.com/user/Zedstergal> | Twitter<https://twitter.com/ZoeGlatt> | LSE bio<http://www.lse.ac.uk/media-and-communications/people/phd-researchers/zoe-glatt>