Paloma Yáñez Serrano

Paloma is an independent ethnographic filmmaker and social anthropologist interested in the methods of adaptation humans develop to address changing environment, technology and political conflicts. She has been working for seven years making films and research projects in Congo, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Spain, Brazil and Mexico. In parallel, she has worked as a facilitator of text and mix-media interactive workshops with children and adults. She is currently doing a PhD in visual anthropology at the University of Manchester studying people’s adaptation to industrial agriculture and changing landscape in the south of Spain.​

Eduard Vasile

Eduard is a Doctoral Research at the Grenada Centre for Visual Anthropology, Manchester University and works at the interference between neuroscience, visual anthropology and art. His main area of interest is how visual elements, such as images and visualisations, used in Tibetan Buddhist meditation practices affect the consciousness and the brain. Eduard specialises in experimental filmmaking as a means of exploring the link between consciousness and the visual in anthropology and neuroscience.

Ian Costabile

Ian Costabile is a composer and sound artist residing in the UK since 2009. He is currently based at the University of Liverpool undertaking an AHRC funded practice-based research. Ian focuses his work on interactive sound spaces, particularly through spatial music, site-specific composition, three-dimensional soundscapes and sensor-based interactive media. One of his main projects consists of the design of "sound canvasses", which are acoustic panels that include an array of loudspeakers and a compact multichannel system hidden behind a canvas.

Eugenio Giorgianni

Eugenio Giorgianni, born in Palermo, Italy, is an anthropologist and an audiovisual member of the Big Tree Collective. He has conducted research concerning urban anthropology, music and migration in Italy, Spain, Morocco, the UK, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A 4th year PhD candidate in Music at Royal Holloway, University of London, his doctoral research examines the musical languages of Congolese migrants through a participatory audiovisual ethnography.

Amber Kale

Amber Kale is a PhD candidate in Human Geography at Victoria University of Wellington. Her research explores processes of refugee resettlement and social integration in New Zealand, in particular focusing on theories of displacement, place-attachment, citizenship, identity and belonging. Over the past few years her research has adopted a scholar activist orientation, drawing on participatory approaches, sensory methodologies, and art practice to engage local refugee background communities and host societies in collaborative social science research which aims to enable more equitable social outcomes for resettling refugees.

Clara Kleininger

Clara studied anthropology, video and film at the University of Vienna, in Mexico City as well as at the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology in Manchester. She has since filmed documentaries around the world, from Moldavia to Brazil. For the past four years, she has been living and working in Poland, teaching film and photography, has recently finished the documentary film course at the Wajda Film School and is now directing a film project in co-production with the Polish Film Institute.

Jess Robins

Jess Robins is interested in how communities are created and how they remain active and productive. With experience in education and training, Jess has taught digital skills, English as a Foreign Language, and sailing. Recently, she has worked as a designer on social media campaigns for business and non-profits; and designed learning programmes in the public sector. She is now based at Lancaster University.

Stefania Villa

With an academic background in Sociology and a master in Visual Anthropology (GRANADA Center – University of Manchester), Stefania Villa is a Milan based film producer and researcher. A member of the Big Tree collective, she has been independently working for characters development for script writing before moving into film production. She is currently working for MIR Cinematografica, an Italian independent production company specialised in art house films and creative documentaries. With MIR she is currently developing and internationally co-producing cinematographic and tv documentaries and a feature fiction written by Maurizio Braucci (scriptwriter of Garrone’s GOMORRA, Munzi’s BLACK SOULS, Marcello’s LOST AND BEAUTIFUL, Giovannesi’s PIRANHAS… ) and Rebecca Lenkiewicz (Pawlikowski’s IDA…).

Anna Pozzali

Anna is a Doctoral student in Social Anthropology with Visual Media at the University of Manchester. She is currently carrying out long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Manchester where she is exploring what it means to grow old in a post-industrial place and society. Through a collaborative approach, her work adopts drawings as a research method and as a mode of ethnographic representation. Prior to her PhD studies, Anna received a Master in Visual Anthropology from the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology in Manchester.

Lana Askari

Lana Askari recently obtained her PhD in Social Anthropology with Visual Media from the University of Manchester. She studied political science and anthropology at University College Utrecht and Cambridge University, and was trained in documentary filmmaking at the Granda Centre for Visual Anthropology Manchester. Her MA graduation film “Haraka Baraka: Movement is a Blessing” was nominated for the Wiley Student Prize by the RAI film festival 2015. Lana is interested in the anthropology of the Middle-East, the Kurdistan region and issues of migration, youth, time and (urban) planning. Her PhD research focused on how people in Iraqi Kurdistan imagine and plan their future in times of crisis, for which she produced the films “Bridge to Kobane” (2016) and “Future Factory” (2018). She currently works at a Dutch consultancy company focused on achieving social impact through the public sector. 

Benjamin Llorens Rocamora

Benjamin has a history degree from the University of Alicante but following his passion he became an autodidact audiovisual producer. He currently lives in the UK where he works as a freelance filmmaker and a sound recordist for the Big Tree Collective since 2015, being involved in film productions in Congo,  Lebanon, Brazil, Mexico, Spain, Norway and UK. He is currently, the co-director of two Big Tree Collective projects: “The end of an era” where he explores the representation of workers in the fossil fuel industry and the significance that climate change has in their jobs. And “Elegidas”, a film about woman working in the agro-industrial complex of el Ejido (Spain), the biggest concentration of greenhouses in Europe. At the VRN Residency-Conference he will be in charge of his other passion: The food. Providing a catering based in local products, fair-trade relations and low carbon emissions.