This article was first posted on Politis' Cultural page Parathyro
Limassol's beach, its markets and its neighbourhoods became a classroom this month, not through lectures, but through ethnographic walks, field exercises and documentary filmmaking. Students learned to read the city not simply as a backdrop, but as a space that carries its own inscriptions and meanings.
From 8 to 13 July, the Department of Communication and Internet Studies and the Department of Fine Arts at the Cyprus University of Technology (CUT) hosted students and academics from across Europe for a week-long Blended Intensive Programme (BIP) in Media Anthropology and Filmmaking Practices, the first of its kind at the university.
Limassol as a field site
The programme treated Limassol itself as a living laboratory. Participants explored the city's beach, its markets and its neighbourhoods through ethnographic walks, field exercises and documentary work, learning to approach the city not merely as scenery, but as an inscribed space carrying its own social meanings.
The BIP brought together researchers and practitioners working at the intersection of anthropology, film, fine and visual arts, technology and everyday practice. Among the key contributors were Athina Peglidou and Penelope Papailias from Greece, Jaime Quilles Campos and Roberto Oliver Sanchez Garcia from Spain, and Yiannis Papadakis, Rahme Veziroğlu, Markos Souropetsis, Theodoros Kouros, Yiannis Christidis and Selin Genç from Cyprus, whose work in anthropology, socially engaged art, participatory storytelling, podcasting, film and the politics of the image shaped the programme's critical direction.
Thinking through the camera
The programme was built around a single guiding question: what does it mean to think anthropologically through video? Sessions moved between theory and practice, from seminars on the ethics of representation and the politics of the gaze to hands-on workshops in documentary filmmaking, sound recording and visual storytelling.
The BIP gave participants the tools to work with images and sound the way anthropologists work with words, carefully, reflectively, and always with respect for the people taking part. The visual works students produced were shown at Xydadiko in Limassol on the programme's final day, as part of a public event.
A European collaboration
The programme ran under the Erasmus+ Blended Intensive Programme scheme, bringing together students and academics from universities across Europe. Participants came from Greece (the University of Thessaly and the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki), Spain (Universidad Miguel Hernández de Elche), Romania (the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca) and Cyprus (CUT). The programme was coordinated by Yiannis Christidis, Associate Professor at the Department of Fine Arts, and Theodoros Kouros, Lecturer at the Department of Communication and Internet Studies.
The BIP forms part of a wider push at CUT to organise international and local programmes that connect applied research, fieldwork and creative practice, with the aim of establishing the university as a regional hub for critical thinking in media and anthropology.
