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Anthropology Department seminar in Vienna
Published on
May 23, 2026
Hospitals are currently seen as notes of clinical waste, using excessive single-use plastics and disposables, generating mountains of rubbish. Inside hospitals however, people work with materials in many different ways. They might find new uses of objects for example rather than throw them away. This and more were the topics that Anna Harris addressed during her talk at the University of Vienna.
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Information of the Event
The Upcycled Clinic Principal Investigator, Anna Harris, participated in the Lecture Series in Social and Cultural Anthropology organised by the University of Vienna, where she presented and discussed the project.
During the talk, while introducing the sensory ethnographic project in the hospital context, she focused on the sensory potential of materials within healthcare settings. In this sense, hospitals are often perceived as sites of clinical waste, characterised by the extensive use of single-use plastics and disposable materials, which generate mountains of rubbish. Inside hospitals however, people work with materials in many different ways. They might find new uses of objects for example rather than throw them away.
Anna therefore invited the audience to reflect on these practices of repair and repurposing, which often remain invisible because they are “off-protocol”. In her talk, she also presented the ethnographic approach developed within the project to study upcycled materials in hospitals across different parts of the world, sharing preliminary observations.
