Upcoming Events

7 May 2026

Workshop with Laura Lamas Abraira

Ethno-Graphic Experiments Beyond Representation: A Workshop on Thinking, Making, and Collaborating through Arts‑Based Research Methods

11:00am – 1:00pm

Maria-Theresiacollege, Room 00.12 (Sint-Michielsstraat 6, 3000 Leuven)

This workshop is now full. Please contact Sonja Ruud (sonjafaaren.ruud@kuleuven.be) if you would like to join a waitlist.

This mixed theoretical–practical workshop explores diverse approaches to drawing and analog mixed graphic media—understood as the combination of multiple hands‑on materials or techniques on a single physical surface—within ethnographic practice, both as individual means and as part of arts based participatory methodologies.

The workshop will unfold through collaborative experimentation involving drawing and/or analog mixed‑media creation—no prior experience required—followed by collective reflection on their potential as analytical and expressive devices. Participants will also be invited to reconsider the relationship between parts and wholes—from individual graphic pieces to their integration within different academic outputs—framing ethnographic practice as a multilayered process of data collection, analysis, and presentation, and reflecting on questions of authorship in collaborative projects.

At 4pm, Laura will also deliver a hybrid seminar with the KU Leuven Anthropology Department, in collaboration with the EASA AnthroMob network, on the theme of “(Im)mobility, Aspiration, and the Structural Divide: Filipino Domestic Workers in Hong Kong and the City Otherwise.”

Laura Lamas‑Abraira’s academic background has centred on the fields of fine arts and anthropology. In her twenties, she graduated in Fine Arts in Spain and in Plastic Arts in France, and later pursued an academic career in anthropology, earning a degree in sociocultural anthropology, a master’s degree in ethnographic research, and an international PhD in intercultural studies. After working as a postdoctoral researcher on two EU‑funded consortium projects, she obtained a Ramón y Cajal (RYC2021) international postdoctoral fellowship, and in January 2023 she joined the Department of Anthropology at the Spanish National Research Council. Her research interests include migration, care, gender, inequality, and public space. Her current approach promotes arts‑based participatory methodologies and experimenting with graphic and audiovisual languages.

Events with Laura Lamas Abraira Download

8-9 December 2025

Literary Events with Daniel Franco Sánchez

Join us for both a seminar and workshop led by Daniel Franco Sánchez, the founder of a small independent publisher in Spain, editorial graviola.

As part of the seminar, Daniel will discuss graviola’s work as a platform for creation and cultural mediation with migrant communities and how editorial practices can become a space of dialogue, archive, and collective identity construction. The following day, he will be leading a bilingual workshop (English/Spanish) on the theme of “Writing as belonging”.

Both the seminar and the workshop will be held at the KU Faculty of Arts in Leuven (Blijde-Inkomststraat, 21). They will take place in Het Salon (room 00.04), in the main Erasmushuis building.

Blijde-Inkomststraat 21, Leuven, Belgium

Literary Events with Daniel Franco Download

Event organized by Sonja Faaren Ruud and Joana Roqué Pesquer / Poster designed by Joana Roqué Pesquer.

past events

30-31st of May 2024

COLLAB SYMPOSIUM 2024

Authorship in a Transnational and Global Context

The symposium “Authorship in a Global and Transnational Context” explores how collaboration and activist networks in contexts of migration redefine traditional notions of authorship.

Keynote speaker: Leila Essa (Utrecht University)

Poster designed by Anna Sofia Churchill

KU Leuven

6th of May 2024

2nd COLLAB Reading Group – Ethnography

The text we will be discussing James Clifford’s introduction to Writing Culture. The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (“Partial Truths”) published by University of California Press, 1986.

11:30h – KU Leuven – LETT 03.16

24-26th of April 2024

“Towards a Literary Anthropology of Migrant Aesthetics: Political and Contextual Forms of Transnational Collaboration”.

Paper presented by Núria Codina.

At Recentring Form(s) in and of the Margins. The Politics of Self-Reflexivity – Conference organized by Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Vrije Universiteit Brussel

27th of March 2024

Guest Lecture by Ahmedur Chowdhury (Tutul) on Literary Activism and Displacement

Ahmedur Chowdhury, known as Tutul, will be joining us in Leuven for an open guest lecture organized by COLLAB.

Poster designed by Anna Sofia Churchill

16:00-18:00h – KU Leuven, MSI 01.23.

25th-26th of March 2024

“Rooting Displacement: ‘Exiled Writers Ink’ as a Case Study of Civic Mobilization through Transnational Collaborative Writing”

Paper presented by Núria Codina and Marialena Avgerinou

At the international conference Transnational Activisms Reimagining Boundaries in Political Cultural Production,

University College Dublin

21st-23rd of March 2024

“How will we read in the future?”

PhD Masterclass with Emer O’Sullivan and Rebecca Walkowitz

There will also be a companion exhibition titled Born translated. Reading comparatively, which will be open to the public from the 25th until the 29th of March, Monday to Friday, from 14.00pm to 18.00pm. The COLLAB team will showcase two pieces: a video installation made by Anna Sofia Churchill and Joana Roqué Pesquer, as well as a zine made by Marialena Avgerinou.

Ghent University