Mount Royal University · Calgary

Ethnographic Research & Practice Lab

A resource for students, researchers, and community interested in ethnographic research methods and practice—grounded in ethical, decolonial, and anti-racist commitments.

01 / About

Practice as relation

Ethnography is made through encounters: situated, unfinished, accountable.

Established by Mount Royal University faculty in 2023, the Ethnographic Research & Practice Lab supports students, researchers, and community members interested in ethnographic research methods and practice. The Lab explicitly recognizes anthropology’s colonial roots and the discipline’s historic participation in colonial projects. Through experiential learning and professional development, it works to foster ethical, decolonial, and anti-racist forms of ethnographic practice.

Decolonize method

Recognize anthropology’s colonial histories and critically reconsider how ethnographic knowledge is produced, circulated, and put into practice.

Experiential learning

Create opportunities for students and members to develop ethnographic capacities through practice, professional development, collaboration, and public engagement.

Ethnography across forms

Explore writing, dialogue, visual media, collective art, public scholarship, and experimental formats as possible modes of ethnographic knowledge-making.

Ethical practice

Equip students and members to conduct ethnographic research with attention to responsibility, reciprocity, solidarity, and the relations research creates.

02 / People

Researchers + collaborators

Founder / Co-Lead

Gloria C. Pérez-Rivera

Sociocultural anthropologist and Assistant Professor in Sociology & Anthropology. Her research and teaching integrate political and economic anthropology with migration studies, labour studies, justice & peace studies, and critical criminology through transnational projects in Colombia and Canada. At MRU she teaches Introduction to Anthropology, Ethnographic Methods, and Gifts and Commodities. Before completing her PhD and postdoctoral fellowship in anthropology, she worked as an emergency-room physician in Colombia.

gperezrivera@mtroyal.ca

Co-Lead

George Mantzios

Sociocultural anthropologist and Assistant Professor in Sociology & Anthropology. His research examines how contested national monuments and major infrastructure projects become sites of struggle over historical justice, collective memory, and cultural heritage, with a focus on contemporary Greece. At MRU he teaches courses including Ethnography in Anthropology and History of Anthropology. He is also Associate Director of the Pelion Summer Lab for Cultural Theory & Experimental Humanities in Greece.

gmantzios@mtroyal.ca

Co-Founder

Celeste Pang

Assistant Professor in Women’s & Gender Studies. Trained in sociocultural and medical anthropology with a specialization in sexual diversity studies, her research, teaching, and community work focus on aging, disability, care access and equity, with significant attention to 2SLGBTQIA+ issues. She teaches courses including Transnational Feminisms and 2SLGBTQI+ Health.

ncpang@mtroyal.ca

Student Member

Reanna Varga

Health and Physical Education student majoring in Ecotourism and Outdoor Leadership. During a Spring/Summer 2025 practicum placement, she conducted qualitative research on the experiences of students with disabilities in outdoor education. She also supports knowledge mobilization for the Lab.

Collaborator

SAMRU

Students’ Association of Mount Royal University.

Visit SAMRU

03 / Situated

Land, relation, responsibility

Research happens somewhere.

Mount Royal University stands on ancient, storied lands shaped by ceremony, history, and Indigenous presence. With gratitude and reciprocity, the Lab acknowledges relations to the land and all beings, and the songs, stories, and teachings of the Siksika Nation, Piikani Nation, Kainai Nation, Îethka Stoney Nakoda Nation (Chiniki, Bearspaw and Goodstoney Nations), Tsuut’ina Nation, and the Métis.

These relations entail responsibility: to work in solidarity and to continue decolonizing our practices and the relations through which research is made.

Situated resource / 01 Explore the lands where you are Native Land Digital · Interactive Map

Native Land Digital is a living educational resource. Its map does not represent official or legal boundaries; visitors are encouraged to connect directly with Indigenous nations to learn more about their territories and histories.

Enter thefield.

For collaboration, research opportunities, workshops, student involvement, or public programming, contact the Lab’s co-leads.

Gloria Pérez-Rivera George Mantzios