Lecture | Research Seminar
CADS Spotlight: Shajeela Shawkat & James McGrail
- Shajeela Shawkat & James McGrail
- Date
- Monday 2 June 2025
- Time
- Location
-
Pieter de la Court
Wassenaarseweg 52
2333 AK Leiden - Room
- 5A42
Shajeela's Talk
Shajeela's paper explores the use of art workshops as a methodological tool to engage with the lived experiences of individuals with spinal cord injuries (SCI) and their caregivers, conducted through ethnographic fieldwork at a rehabilitation center in Bangalore, India. The paper examines how art serves as a medium to explore themes of bodily experience, relational identity, and the social dimensions of caregiving, which profoundly shape personhood.
Through these workshops narratives of bodily awareness and imaginative connection to pre-injury self emerged. In sessions with SCI residents, art became a channel for personal storytelling, enabling participants to move beyond their shared identity of disability and reveal aspects of self that extended to aspirations and memories. Art workshops provides participants with another, embodied means of expression, fostering trust and rapport between researcher and participants in a safe, collaborative environment.
Workshops with doctors and nurses revealed the professional and emotional complexities of caregiving, while sessions with caregivers highlighted the informal networks of support they cultivate. These experiences underscored the role of art in creating spaces for self-expression and community within medical and caregiving contexts, where the relational dynamics of body, self, and society shape persoonhood in powerful ways.
This paper positions art as a mutlomodal approach to fieldwork, offering both methodological dimension and therapeutic respite within the rehabilitation landscape. This framework broadens ethnographic fieldwork from participant observation to active contribution, transforming workshops into spaces of mutual interaction and uncovering the complex personal and social narratives of SCI patients and caregivers.
About Shajeela
S. Shajeela Shawkat is currently part of the ERC-funded project Globalizing Palliative Care, where her research focuses on the care trajectories of individuals with spinal cord injuries, supported by fieldwork conducted at a rehabilitation center in Bangalore, India.
She completed her Master’s degree from Leiden University in the Netherlands, where her thesis investigated diversity within the Computer Science faculty. During her time at Leiden, she also worked as a tutor for one year. Prior to this, she completed her Bachelor’s degree at BRAC University in Bangladesh, conducting fieldwork that examined the construction of hijra identity among hijra sex workers in Dhaka.
In addition, Shajeela has four years of experience in the non-profit sector in Bangladesh, where she was involved in designing schools for marginalized communities and worked as a high school teacher for one year.
James' Talk
Since Singapore's independence in the 1960s, the People’s Action Party (PAP) has claimed that its political platform is driven by pragmatism, not ideology. This approach to governance aligns well with the big-data revolution, which promises to rationalise and automate government processes. It is a promise that the Singaporean state has embraced with zeal, launching its Smart Nation initiative in 2014, which aims to extract vast amounts of data from across the island. With the introduction of large language models (LLMs), it is argued that big data can be transformed into policy with the click of a button. As a result, Singapore has integrated AI at every level of government. The country has invested heavily in OpenAI, incorporated AI into the software used by civil servants, and offered grants to government departments and state-owned enterprises to incorporate AI into their operations. This includes the Islamic religious authority, MUIS, which received both grant money and support from Google to create an AI Fatwa bot. With the help of this bot, MUIS hopes to speed up the process of issuing religious rulings and reassert its religious authority. The future of Singapore is increasingly intertwined with big data and AI.
However, despite the PAP's political monopoly, alternative visions of the future continue to thrive. In this presentation, I will explore how Singapore’s Muslim community challenges the logics of big data, speaks back to AI, and envisions alternative futures in a country known for its censorship and surveillance. What futures exist in Singapore beyond the techno-determinist vision proposed by the state?
About James
James McGrail is a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology at Leiden University. He is a member of the NWO funded One Among Zeroes research project. As part of the project his research focuses on how AI changes the way Muslims in Singapore imagine the future. He is particularly focused on how new technologies shape governance. James is a multimodal ethnographer who utilises a range of methods including zine-making, annotation and sonic ethnography. Through these methods he hopes to explore aspects of technology, and futuring which are less tangible, from underground cables, to imagined futures.