I am Santiago Orrego, an ethnographer working in anthropology, STS, multimodal research, and urban studies. My work focuses on experimental ethnography, seen as both a method and a creative practice. I enjoy exploring urban infrastructures, more-than-human interactions, new methods in anthropology, and the small, frequently disregarded elements that shape everyday encounters in urban environments.
Instead of focusing on complete accounts, I pay close attention to fragments. Fragments include residues, traces, and minimal details that show how life is interconnected across human and nonhuman worlds. Studying fragments allows ethnography to emphasize processes often overlooked or even discarded by traditional research. My approach is both curatorial and multimodal. Among other media and modes, I frequently combine fieldnotes, illustrations, photographs, and small taxonomies. These elements are assembled to create knowledge that is rigorous yet imaginative. In this way, experimental ethnography expands what counts as evidence and how it can be shared.
My academic background includes training in journalism, sociology, and anthropology. This transdisciplinary scenario, plus a continuous interest in self-learning several visual and digital techniques, has grounded my work in empirical research while fostering public communication and creative experimentation. I am convinced that ethnography should navigate not only across disciplines but also across publics, integrating, that way, conceptual and empirical analysis with visual and sensory forms. Additionally, I collaborate through writing, drawing, and digital projects. Information visualization and curated fragments become essential tools for thinking. Visual and sensorial archives provide new ways to engage with ecological fragility and more-than-human relationships.
My current projects contribute to debates in experimental and multimodal ethnography, inventive methods, and urban multispecies research. Through collaborative formats, my goal is to expand ethnography to include care, imagination, multiple modes, and broader participation. This page displays my background, current interests, thoughts, and ongoing efforts to develop creative ways to make ethnographic knowledge public. It offers an introduction to the themes, methods, and practices that guide my research.
| Postdoctoral Researcher at the Materiality of Crisis Lab, Universidad de Murcia, ES. |
| Former positions |
| Visiting Fellow at the Collaborative Research Center “Reconfiguration of Spaces” at the Technical University of Berlin, DE. |
| Lecturer at Hochschule Magdeburg-Stendal, DE. |
| Lecturer at Hochschule Emden-Leer, DE. |
| Research associate, George Simmel Center for Urban Studies. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, DE. (DFG Walter-Benjamin Fellowship). |
| Predoctoral researcher, Munich Center for Technology in Society, MCTS. Technical University of Munich, DE. |
| Lecturer at Universidad de Antioquia, CO. |