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Decolonize method
Recognize anthropology’s colonial histories and critically reconsider how ethnographic knowledge is produced, circulated, and put into practice.
Mount Royal University · Calgary
Ethnographic Research & Practice Lab
A resource for students, researchers, and community interested in ethnographic research methods and practice—grounded in ethical, decolonial, and anti-racist commitments.
01 / About
Practice as relation
Ethnography is made through encounters: situated, unfinished, accountable.
Established by Mount Royal University faculty in 2023, the Ethnographic Research & Practice Lab supports students, researchers, and community members interested in ethnographic research methods and practice. The Lab explicitly recognizes anthropology’s colonial roots and the discipline’s historic participation in colonial projects. Through experiential learning and professional development, it works to foster ethical, decolonial, and anti-racist forms of ethnographic practice.
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Experiential learning
Create opportunities for students and members to develop ethnographic capacities through practice, professional development, collaboration, and public engagement.
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Ethnography across forms
Explore writing, dialogue, visual media, collective art, public scholarship, and experimental formats as possible modes of ethnographic knowledge-making.
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Ethical practice
Equip students and members to conduct ethnographic research with attention to responsibility, reciprocity, solidarity, and the relations research creates.
02 / People
Researchers + collaborators
Founder / Co-Lead
Gloria C. Pérez-Rivera
Sociocultural anthropologist and Assistant Professor in Sociology & Anthropology. Her research and teaching integrate political and economic anthropology with migration studies, labour studies, justice & peace studies, and critical criminology through transnational projects in Colombia and Canada. At MRU she teaches Introduction to Anthropology, Ethnographic Methods, and Gifts and Commodities. Before completing her PhD and postdoctoral fellowship in anthropology, she worked as an emergency-room physician in Colombia.
gperezrivera@mtroyal.caCo-Lead
George Mantzios
Sociocultural anthropologist and Assistant Professor in Sociology & Anthropology. His research examines how contested national monuments and major infrastructure projects become sites of struggle over historical justice, collective memory, and cultural heritage, with a focus on contemporary Greece. At MRU he teaches courses including Ethnography in Anthropology and History of Anthropology. He is also Associate Director of the Pelion Summer Lab for Cultural Theory & Experimental Humanities in Greece.
gmantzios@mtroyal.caCo-Founder
Celeste Pang
Assistant Professor in Women’s & Gender Studies. Trained in sociocultural and medical anthropology with a specialization in sexual diversity studies, her research, teaching, and community work focus on aging, disability, care access and equity, with significant attention to 2SLGBTQIA+ issues. She teaches courses including Transnational Feminisms and 2SLGBTQI+ Health.
ncpang@mtroyal.caStudent Member
Reanna Varga
Health and Physical Education student majoring in Ecotourism and Outdoor Leadership. During a Spring/Summer 2025 practicum placement, she conducted qualitative research on the experiences of students with disabilities in outdoor education. She also supports knowledge mobilization for the Lab.
Collaborator
SAMRU
Students’ Association of Mount Royal University.
Visit SAMRU
03 / Research
Projects in motion
Projects in motion
04 / Dispatches
Public work / field signals
Public work / field signals
3 Mar 2026
New Blood at MRU
AAMRU and the Iniskim Centre bring New Blood back to the Nickel Theatre — a performance of poetry, music, contemporary and traditional dance inspired by the life of Siksika leader Vincent Yellow Old Woman.
23-27 Feb 2026
The Phoenix of Gaza XR @ MRU: Canadian Premiere
The Canadian premiere welcomed 400+ visitors for a week of immersive storytelling, informed witnessing, multimodal learning, and public dialogue at Riddell Library.
27 Nov 2025
Flight Routes: Policing and Subterfuge in the Mediterranean Migrant Corridor
A public lecture by Chloe Howe Haralambous, Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University, presenting ongoing research on Europe’s maritime border regime in the MRU Library Visualization Room.
12 Nov 2025
Contextualizing Palestine
A public panel bringing scholarship into dialogue with settler colonialism, Gaza, the West Bank, Palestinian–Indigenous solidarities, student encampments, and decolonial liberation.
2025
Para-site Manifesto
Penelope Papailias and George Mantzios offer a ten-point manifesto for experimental humanities labs in the non-standard.
2025–26
Social Issues Film Series
Six free screenings and discussions across the 2025–26 academic year, spanning documentary, drama, Québec cinema, political thriller, and stop-motion animation.
2025
Leviathan’s Maw / Artistic Publication
George Mantzios’s illustration appears in Graphic Refuge: Visuality and Mobility in Refugee Comics (Wilfrid Laurier UP). Conceived on Lesvos during the 2017 “Cultures, Migrations, Borders” program, the work reflects on the Mediterranean migration crisis and on graphic art as an ethnographic form.
7 Mar 2025
Aunties | Anti
An exhibition by the Jellybean Collective and MRU student artists on kinship, chosen family, care, memory, and anti-colonial relation.
Archive
View all Dispatches
Browse the complete archive of public lectures, panels, screenings, publications, and artistic research.
05 / Situated
Land, relation, responsibility
Research happens somewhere.
Mount Royal University stands on ancient, storied lands shaped by ceremony, history, and Indigenous presence. With gratitude and reciprocity, the Lab acknowledges relations to the land and all beings, and the songs, stories, and teachings of the Siksika Nation, Piikani Nation, Kainai Nation, Îethka Stoney Nakoda Nation (Chiniki, Bearspaw and Goodstoney Nations), Tsuut’ina Nation, and the Métis.
These relations entail responsibility: to work in solidarity and to continue decolonizing our practices and the relations through which research is made.
Situated resource / 01
Explore the lands where you are
Native Land Digital · Interactive Map
Native Land Digital is a living educational resource. Its map does not represent official or legal boundaries; visitors are encouraged to connect directly with Indigenous nations to learn more about their territories and histories.
Enter thefield.
For collaboration, research opportunities, workshops, student involvement, or public programming, contact the Lab’s co-leads.