Members
The membership is organised in three groups: the Working Commission, the CVA Network, and honorary members.
Working Commission
Chaired by Mihai Andrei Leaha
(Romania/Norway)
Visual and multimodal anthropologist working on grassroots DIY and music cultures, visual disinformation, artificial intelligence, and ethnographic cinema. Conducted postdoctoral research on visual disinformation at the University of Barcelona for the ERC project "Visual Trust." His award-winning films have screened internationally and his curatorial work has featured at festivals in Brazil, Romania, Germany, and Spain. He writes in Cultural Anthropology, Visual Studies, Multimodality and Society, and Visual Ethnography.
email: mihai.a.leaha@uit.no
Working Commission
Itsushi Kawase
(Japan)
Professor at the National Museum of Ethnology and the Graduate University for Advanced Studies, combining engaged scholarship with ethnographic filmmaking, poetry, fiction, and performance. His research addresses hereditary poet-singers in northern Ethiopia and Ethiopian diaspora religious practice in Tokyo. His films include Azmari, the Feast of Voices (2024), When Spirits Ride Their Horses (2012), and Room 11, Ethiopia Hotel (2007). He has won the 2021 Suntory Literary Prize and the 2022 Umesao Tadao Literary Prize, and co-edits the online journal TRAJECTORIA.
email: kawase@minpaku.ac.jp
Working Commission
Jan Lorenz
(Poland)
Assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology and Ethnology at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, with a PhD in social anthropology with visual media from the University of Manchester. His work focuses on the anthropology of religion, religious conversion, self-transformation, and belonging, and on sensory media art, with recent research at the intersection of material religion, robotics, and artificial intelligence.
Working Commission
Andrew Simon Tucker
(Colombia)
Associate Professor of documentary filmmaking at the University of Magdalena, working on expanded-reality nonfiction, community co-creation, indigenous filmmaking, and hybrid documentary forms, primarily with indigenous and farming communities on Colombia's Caribbean coast. His feature documentary The Accordion's Voyage (2013) has screened in cinemas, on television, and on streaming platforms. MA in visual anthropology (Manchester), PhD in arts, culture and media (Groningen).
email: atucker@unimagdalena.edu.co
Working Commission
Alonso Quinteros Meléndez
(Peru)
PhD in anthropology (Pontifical Catholic University of Peru) and MA in cinema studies (NYU). His research and teaching cover the ethnography of film and media practice, ethnographic documentary, visual and sonic methods, sound studies, and the history of Peruvian documentary cinema. He co-founded the master's programme in visual anthropology at PUCP and supervises its Visual Anthropology Lab.
Working Commission
Vi Grunvald
(Brazil)
Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the postgraduate programme in social anthropology at UFRGS, and a member of its Centre for Visual Anthropology (co-coordinator 2019 to 2023). She coordinates the Visual Anthropology Committee of the Brazilian Anthropological Association (ABA) for 2025 to 2026 and was president of the Pierre Verger Award (2021 to 2022). Her audiovisual work Domingo (with Paulo Mendel) was commissioned by the 21st Sesc_Videobrasil and has won awards in Portugal and Brazil.
CVA Network members
Mouazamou Ahmadou
(Cameroon)
Lecturer and researcher at the University of Ngaoundéré and Head of its Anthropology Department, a director of ethnographic films, and a specialist in pastoral societies, migration, and border issues. He leads the Visual Anthropology Laboratory in Maroua. Award-winning films include Les eaux de la discorde (with C. Raimond, 2023) and Living with Boko Haram (with T. Waage, VCS-UiT, 2016).
CVA Network members
Aryo Danusiri
(Indonesia)
Assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Indonesia, with a PhD in social anthropology and a secondary field in critical media practice from Harvard. He studies activism and its technologies, supported by the SSRC, Fulbright, and Wenner-Gren, and is co-principal investigator on a multimodal project on indigenous people and state fire governance in Indonesia (DFAT Australia).
CVA Network members
Bata Diallo
(Mali/Norway)
PhD candidate in visual anthropology at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, with a BSc from the University of Bamako and an MSc in visual cultural studies from UiT (master's film Djeneba, 2011). A longtime member of the NAFA film selection committee, she leads the Centre for Digital Archives, Education, and Dissemination (CADED) within "Sahel on Sahel."
CVA Network members
Kijung Lee
(Korea)
Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Chonnam National University and adjunct professor at Seoul National University, with an MA and PhD in visual anthropology from Temple University. President of the Korean Society of Visual Anthropology and of the Korea International Ethnographic Film Festival (KIEFF). He has published thirty books, including studies of Nanook of the North and a History of Ethnographic Film.
Honorary members
Metje Postma
(Netherlands)
Chaired the CVA from 2009 to 2019. Taught visual ethnography at Leiden University from 1989 to 2023. Her films include Of Men and Mares (1998), Voices in the Desert (2005), and Ayda, Lioness Among the Free Lions (2024). She co-edited Reflecting Visual Ethnography (2006, with Peter Ian Crawford).
Honorary members
Bao Jiang
(China)
Bao Jiang is a Research Fellow and Professor at the Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), Beijing, where he also supervises doctoral students. He was born in 1968 in Lijiang, Yunnan Province. In 2000, he completed the first advanced training programme in visual anthropology at Yunnan University's East Asian Institute of Visual Anthropology. He went on to earn his PhD in anthropology from Minzu University of China in 2003.
His research focuses on visual anthropology, symbolic theory, ethnography, and cultural heritage. His books include "You and I in the Field" (2017), "Chronicle of the Wahuang Palace" (2013), and "The Origin of the Symbol" (2008), and his ethnographic films include "Chronicle of the Wahuang Palace" (2012) and "Happy New Year" (2026).
Bao Jiang chaired the CVA from 2019 to 2023 and serves as deputy director of the Ethnic Film and Visual Anthropology Committee within the Chinese Ethnology and Anthropology Society.
Honorary members
Rossella Ragazzi
(Italy/Norway)
Associate Professor in Visual and Museum Anthropology at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, a professional filmmaker, and a member of the CVA advisory board. Her research spans indigenous and Sámi museums, migration, and transcultural cinema, with current work on critical cultural heritage and indigeneity in Sápmi. Recent book: Memory Institutions and Sámi Heritage (co-edited with Trude Fonneland, Routledge, 2024). Her prize-winning films include La Mémoire Dure (2000), At Home in the World (2003), and Firekeepers (2007). She leads the SAMFORSK research group and co-edits TRAJECTORIA.
https://www.facebook.com/CVA.iuaes
Contact
Chair: Mihai Andrei Leaha
mihai.a.leaha@uit.no
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Filmed by Kai Kagitani
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© 2026 Commission on Visual Anthropology