Authors: Ria Lowenschuss (‘27), Samara Mellis (‘27), and Justin Armstrong (Writing/Anthropology)

Justin

Over the course of two weeks in May 2025, the three of us foraged for endemic sounds in and around Reykjavik with the goal of gathering material for a series of audio ethnographies reflecting the importance of sound as a text that presents audiences with a new mode of understanding place-based identities in the context of travel, tourism and globalization. To this end, in spring 2025 Samara, Ria and I began a Paulson Initiative-funded project to develop a Wellesley College soundscape/audio essay that captured the senses of place and identity on campus. Following this work, we extended  our practice to Iceland to create a complimentary set of soundscapes centered around the conflicting identities of local and tourist. Both Wellesley and Iceland provided excellent fodder for unique audio essays that directly interrogated the intersection between sound, place, and identity in contemporary society. 

This fall we are working together to assemble our recordings into the finished ‘essays’ and presenting our work to audiences on campus and around the world. We have also begun work on a collaborative journal article that chronicles the processes, challenges, and outcomes of our work at Wellesley College and in Iceland.

I am grateful toTSSL and Mellon for funding this important work and for offering the students a rare opportunity to be directly involved in hands-on humanistic social science research. The project has been extremely rewarding and enriching for all involved and we are excited to continue this work over the coming months and years.

 

Samara

Traveling to Iceland with Justin and Ria was a true experience of fieldwork in action! I spent the two weeks immersing myself in Icelandic culture (both tourist and local), tromping around Reykjavik, and discussing the tenets of anthropology. I am deeply grateful to have had this opportunity to actualize theoretical understandings of positionality, participant-observation, and sound ethnography. This fall, I am enjoying bringing what I learned in the field back to Wellesley. 

 

 

Ria

I’m not sure I truly thought of myself as an anthropologist until my time spent in Iceland with Justin and Samara. It was a transformative experience, allowing me to understand what it takes to do anthropological fieldwork and immerse myself in both the project and the culture. The people we spoke to and the interactions we observed have prompted me to complicate my understanding of belonging as it relates to Wellesley, Iceland, and beyond, while also introducing the importance of soundscapes to our own conceptions of place. I feel so lucky to have had the opportunity to not only practice hands-on anthropological research but to do it with Justin and Samara. I believe our partnership is one of the most important parts of this project.