Aiko Cappe

Introduction :

Aiko Cappe is an anthropologist, currently doing her PhD at UCLouvain under supervision of Frederic Laugrand. During her master thesis entitled Des animaux à l’épreuve de l’ethnographie : rencontre avec des loups et des chiens singuliers en pays gwich’in (Old Crow, Yukon), Aiko has been working on the concept of animal ethnography. The project was to realise immersion into nature, same way ethnographers do among communities, and gather all kind of observations and datas about wolves and the way they seem to live, organise for themselves and into a larger nature including humans. Thus she has been working with the Gwich’in community of Old Crow on her project about wolves. From her fieldwork observations in the Yukon, she bas been invited to consider a larger ecosystem in order to honestly follow her ambition to devote her research to the human/non-human continuum. A continuum she has been experiencing in many ways through personal as well as professional experiences.

She is now working on a temperate rainforest ecosystem in Tasmania on her PhD project entitled Into the Tarkine Rainforest : Ethnography of a Complex Threatened Ecosystem (Tasmania), trying to extend ethnographical approach and tools to a larger kind of community (including humans, animals, trees, fungis, insects, birds, snakes and other reptiles, etc.). She is interested to understand how all those different way of being can actually express and understand somehow each other and settle cohabitation lines between tensions and collaborations. Thus, from the ground to the canopy, the forest appears like an entanglement of life webs in which everyone has a place among all the others.

Education

Since 2019 : PhD in Anthropology (UCLouvain, Belgium). Advisor : Frederic Laugrand

2016-2018 : M.A. in Anthropology (Université Laval, Canada)

2015 : Certificate in social and cultural anthropology (Université Laval, Canada)

2012-2015 : Bachelor in Law (Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, France)

Research Topics

Anthropology of nature. Animal Ethnography. Ecosystem Studies.

Ethnographical concepts and tools adapted to nature study.

Sensitive Anthropology. Sensory Ethnography.

Indigenous knowledges (mostly about nature, animals, and cosmology).

Field Projects

• Yukon Arctic, with Gwich’in People (from 2016 to 2020)

• Wiarton (Ontario, Canada), Groundhog Day (2018)

• Current PhD Fieldwork in the Tarkine Rainforest (Tasmania) since 2019.

Choices of 5 publications/conferences

CAPPE, A., 2017, « Rencontre avec des loups singuliers dans l’Arctique yukonnais », Inuit Studies, 41 (1- 2). [URL : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1061442ar ]

CAPPE, A. and F. LAUGRAND, 2020, “Prédire ou Travestir ? Marmottes et anthropocentrisme dans le Nords-est du Canada », Ethnologies, 42(1).

(Under Press) CAPPE, Aïko, « L’intersubjectivité au-delà de l’espèce. Rencontre avec les chiens d’Old Crow (Yukon) », Recherches amérindiennes au Québec,

(Under Press) CAPPE, A., and F. LAUGRAND « Wiarton Willie, imposture ou météorologue incompris ? Les maux des mots », Deslandes, Charles et Dalie Giroux (ed.), Parler avec les animaux, Presses du l’Université de Montréal, Coll. « Terrain vague ».

Conferences

2019, June 3-7, International Summer School on Human-animal Studies, Lisbon University, « Animal Ethnography, between a theoretical concept and an empirical experiment », Lisbon, Portugal