Next Wednesday, Work in Progress in the Social Studies (WIPSS), will be hosting Prof. Mark-Anthony Falzon who will be giving a paper entitled ‘Cherchez l’oiseau: Birds, hunting, and landscape in Malta.’

Mark Anthony writes, “This paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork done in Malta during the past four years to look at how birds and in particular hunting figure as an implicit part of the Maltese landscape.

“The themes explored include hunting as a means of relating to a multi-sensory landscape, the trouble with biophilia,* transformations of the landscape for the purpose of hunting and/or trapping, the contestation and moral evaluation of transformed places, and the Maltese countryside as a site of surveillance and counter-surveillance tactics.”

Prof. Mark-Anthony Falzon holds a doctorate in social anthropology from the University of Cambridge and is the Head of the Department of Sociology at the University of Malta. Cosmopolitan Connections was published by OUP in 2005 and Multisited Ethnography by Ashgate in 2009.

This event is taking place on Wednesday, the 26th of March, from 6-7pm, followed by discussion; in the Faculty of Arts Library, at the end of the corridor on the third floor of the Old Humanities Building. Students are encouraged to attend. The public is cordially invited.

*The Biophilia hypothesis is E.O. Wilson’s idea that humans are innately attracted to nature.

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