Pluriversal Mobilities: What Happens When Ethnography Embraces Art-Based Research?

This article proposes the concept of pluriversal mobilities. We use it to describe how creative practices, and people move across places, disciplines, and research traditions in ways that resist universalizing tendencies and one-way knowledge flows. Our theoretical perspectives draw on mobility studies and literature on artistic, participatory, and ethnographic methods. We apply them to the eVoices project, an AHRC-funded initiative carried out in 2018. The project’s outputs continue to circulate, long after its funding ended. We explore pluriversal mobilities in two areas: the movement of artistic artifacts, and the movement of stories and people. Our analysis is based on ethnographic fieldnotes and in-depth interviews to trace mobile lived trajectories. We define pluriversal mobilities around three dimensions: coexisting worlds (Brazil and Kenya), diverse research traditions, and intersecting disciplines. We argue that the artivist qualities of the eVoices’ outputs activated these pluriversal mobilities, fostering dialogues in South–North and South–South dynamics.