Alana Osbourne
Biographic Data
| ID | 207448 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alana Osbourne |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alana |
| FAMILY NAME | Osbourne |
| SIGNATURE | OSBOURNE A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Radboud University Nijmegen |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2292-0521 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 28 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Blackness as Matter
This is the introduction to a special section on Blackness as Matter. The collection builds upon a series of dialogues that emerged at two seminars, the first on “Urban Life at the Extensions,” which convened at the University of London Institute in Paris in 2023 and the second, “Ecologies of Black Living,” at the British Academy in London (2025). Both seminars were concerned with Black livingness and the current politics of inhabitation in times…
Ethnography Beyond Earth
What is at stake in engaging outer space ethnographically when colonial histories and power structures continue to shape its exploration and imagination? This question anchored a panel convened in November 2024 at the World Anthropological Union Congress (WAU) in Johannesburg, where we, Hanna Nieber, Anton Nikolotov, Alana Osbourne and Anna Lisa Ramella, explored the intersections of cosmic inquiry, colonial legacies, and ethnographic method. Uni…
Animals, beaches, stars and spirits
This Exploration highlights recent and emergent themes in the study of Caribbean ecologies across the social sciences and humanities. It draws particular attention to the field of black ecologies, which extends a longstanding engagement with the socio-ecological legacies of colonialism and plantation slavery, foregrounding the racialized nature of environmental harm while also underlining the various forms of worldmaking and free-dom afforded by …
Convivial atmotechnics
This article draws on ethnographic work with tour guides in Kingston and local radio animateurs in Abidjan to document their "atmotechnics" - the practices through which they enliven urban atmospheres. Through cross-contextual juxtapositions, we delve into the relational intricacies and contextual variegation of atmotechnics. Crucially, we point to their complexity and significance in cities whose atmospheres are fractured by racialized socio-eco…
Decolonial Museology, Space Travel and the Mineral Cabinet
Taking the Africa Museum's mineral cabinet as a point of departure, I probe the entanglements of inorganic matter, coloniality, and mining for space travel. Through museum ethnography, and by thinking about minerality as a field that connects intra and extra-terrestrial interests, my research unpacks how colonial logics permeate relationships between earthbound and outer spaces. From this vantage point, I investigate how the calls for decolonial …
Sensing insecurity as skill
This special issue departs from the premise that the sensible dimensions of urban (in)security shape lived and embodied experiences of the city in ways that reflect and affect social and spatial forms of control, belonging, and inequality. As visceral as they may seem, we also contend that these sensorial registers of (in)security are far from given: they are learned and taught, whether consciously, or otherwise. Drawing on ideas of enskilment an…
Tuning into Heat
In this article, I address how discernments of alterity as insecurity are intimately connected to bodily perceptions and cultural elaborations of heat. Focusing on the interplay of temperature and danger, I look at the role of thermoception-as sensation, as ambient quality, as idiom, and as technology-in experiences and retellings of (in)security. These are themes I explore in relation to and beyond Hostile Environment Awareness Training (HEAT), …
Rewording in the Ruins
On Urban Re‐arrangements
This movement introduces the ethos of the collective project: its conceptual and practical preoccupations. It focuses on our concern with urban processes on the cusp of change, in the midst of being re‐arranged, and thus homes in on the various polyrhythms of intersections, how things come together and diverge, how possibilities open and close in urban contexts of continuously shifting horizons
Movement 5. Sensing the Affective Lives of Arrangements
This final movement explores whether thinking with re‐arrangements can help us account for that which is hidden, unseen or nested in the recesses and folds of urban practices. And if so, how we might then talk about and account for elusive parts of an arrangement that both exert an influence and are influenced. This essay uses sensibilities as an entry point into the intangible interactions between subjects and (re)arrangements
Movement 3. Navigating Urban Arrangements
The third movement explores how (re)arrangements are made and re‐worked as people navigate fractured, ever‐shifting landscapes of urban opportunity, conflict and uncertainty. Drawing on fieldwork in Paris, Mogadishu and Abidjan, we point to the fragile, collective and anticipatory knowledges accumulated during navigations, and to how these knowledges become contained within and (re)constitute embodied archives
Movement 2. Formalizing Arrangements
The second movement considers (re)arrangements as projects of formalization that seek to impose and even fix a form to spaces historically constructed as marginal. This impositional arrangement operates as a governmental desire to fix a form by re‐signifying both subjects and spaces
Movement 4. Breath Sigh Tempest
The fourth movement explores the temporal relationship between arrangements and re‐arrangements, addressing the question of how an obdurate and ‘sticky’ temporal order may give way to palpable re‐arrangement of the ways in which subjects experience time. Eschewing a concern with linear homogenous time, it addresses the processes of re‐arrangement by understanding the dynamics of grave events, hauntings of the past, subtly changing rhythms of ever…
Inward Outward, Critical Archival Engagements with Sounds and Films of Coloniality
Reimagining the ArchiveTerminology the gap between one's race, colonial history, and sexuality that might be seen as at odds with or conforming to normative politics and archival practices.Finally, in closing, we will gesture to how Betty Paërl, and our attempt to research her life, scattered among several specialized archives, helps us to reflect on the triangle of positionality formed between researcher-archive-collaborator. Magical TermsMagica…
On a Walking Tour to No Man’s Land
Tourists who visit Trench Town are drawn in by the neighborhood’s rich musical heritage. They want to see the birthplace of reggae and witness the circumstances depicted in many famous Jamaican songs. Knowingly venturing into marginalized territory, into the “ghetto,” travelers expect to encounter spectacular forms of violence. Yet what the walking tour of Trench Town reveals is an experience of another kind, an excursion that exposes poverty as …
What does poverty feel like? Urban inequality and the politics of sensation
The emergent field of ‘sensory urbanism’ studies how socio-spatial boundaries are policed through sensorial means. Such studies have tended to focus on either formal policies that seek to control territories and populations through a governance of the senses, or on more everyday micro-politics of exclusion where conflicts are articulated in a sensory form. This article seeks to extend this work by concentrating on contexts where people deliberate…
Destination slum! 2, 14th-16th May 2014, Potsdam, Germany, New Developments and Perspectives in Slum Tourism Research
What does poverty feel like? Urban inequality and the politics of sensation
The emergent field of ‘sensory urbanism’ studies how socio-spatial boundaries are policed through sensorial means. Such studies have tended to focus on either formal policies that seek to control territories and populations through a governance of the senses, or on more everyday micro-politics of exclusion where conflicts are articulated in a sensory form. This article seeks to extend this work by concentrating on contexts where people deliberate…
Sensing insecurity as skill
This special issue departs from the premise that the sensible dimensions of urban (in)security shape lived and embodied experiences of the city in ways that reflect and affect social and spatial forms of control, belonging, and inequality. As visceral as they may seem, we also contend that these sensorial registers of (in)security are far from given: they are learned and taught, whether consciously, or otherwise. Drawing on ideas of enskilment an…
Movement 3. Navigating Urban Arrangements
The third movement explores how (re)arrangements are made and re‐worked as people navigate fractured, ever‐shifting landscapes of urban opportunity, conflict and uncertainty. Drawing on fieldwork in Paris, Mogadishu and Abidjan, we point to the fragile, collective and anticipatory knowledges accumulated during navigations, and to how these knowledges become contained within and (re)constitute embodied archives
On Urban Re‐arrangements
This movement introduces the ethos of the collective project: its conceptual and practical preoccupations. It focuses on our concern with urban processes on the cusp of change, in the midst of being re‐arranged, and thus homes in on the various polyrhythms of intersections, how things come together and diverge, how possibilities open and close in urban contexts of continuously shifting horizons
Movement 2. Formalizing Arrangements
The second movement considers (re)arrangements as projects of formalization that seek to impose and even fix a form to spaces historically constructed as marginal. This impositional arrangement operates as a governmental desire to fix a form by re‐signifying both subjects and spaces
On a Walking Tour to No Man’s Land
Tourists who visit Trench Town are drawn in by the neighborhood’s rich musical heritage. They want to see the birthplace of reggae and witness the circumstances depicted in many famous Jamaican songs. Knowingly venturing into marginalized territory, into the “ghetto,” travelers expect to encounter spectacular forms of violence. Yet what the walking tour of Trench Town reveals is an experience of another kind, an excursion that exposes poverty as …
Destination slum! 2, 14th-16th May 2014, Potsdam, Germany, New Developments and Perspectives in Slum Tourism Research
On a Walking Tour to No Man’s Land
Tourists who visit Trench Town are drawn in by the neighborhood’s rich musical heritage. They want to see the birthplace of reggae and witness the circumstances depicted in many famous Jamaican songs. Knowingly venturing into marginalized territory, into the “ghetto,” travelers expect to encounter spectacular forms of violence. Yet what the walking tour of Trench Town reveals is an experience of another kind, an excursion that exposes poverty as …
What does poverty feel like? Urban inequality and the politics of sensation
The emergent field of ‘sensory urbanism’ studies how socio-spatial boundaries are policed through sensorial means. Such studies have tended to focus on either formal policies that seek to control territories and populations through a governance of the senses, or on more everyday micro-politics of exclusion where conflicts are articulated in a sensory form. This article seeks to extend this work by concentrating on contexts where people deliberate…
Inward Outward, Critical Archival Engagements with Sounds and Films of Coloniality
Reimagining the ArchiveTerminology the gap between one's race, colonial history, and sexuality that might be seen as at odds with or conforming to normative politics and archival practices.Finally, in closing, we will gesture to how Betty Paërl, and our attempt to research her life, scattered among several specialized archives, helps us to reflect on the triangle of positionality formed between researcher-archive-collaborator. Magical TermsMagica…
Rewording in the Ruins
On Urban Re‐arrangements
This movement introduces the ethos of the collective project: its conceptual and practical preoccupations. It focuses on our concern with urban processes on the cusp of change, in the midst of being re‐arranged, and thus homes in on the various polyrhythms of intersections, how things come together and diverge, how possibilities open and close in urban contexts of continuously shifting horizons
Movement 5. Sensing the Affective Lives of Arrangements
This final movement explores whether thinking with re‐arrangements can help us account for that which is hidden, unseen or nested in the recesses and folds of urban practices. And if so, how we might then talk about and account for elusive parts of an arrangement that both exert an influence and are influenced. This essay uses sensibilities as an entry point into the intangible interactions between subjects and (re)arrangements
Movement 3. Navigating Urban Arrangements
The third movement explores how (re)arrangements are made and re‐worked as people navigate fractured, ever‐shifting landscapes of urban opportunity, conflict and uncertainty. Drawing on fieldwork in Paris, Mogadishu and Abidjan, we point to the fragile, collective and anticipatory knowledges accumulated during navigations, and to how these knowledges become contained within and (re)constitute embodied archives
Movement 2. Formalizing Arrangements
The second movement considers (re)arrangements as projects of formalization that seek to impose and even fix a form to spaces historically constructed as marginal. This impositional arrangement operates as a governmental desire to fix a form by re‐signifying both subjects and spaces
Movement 4. Breath Sigh Tempest
The fourth movement explores the temporal relationship between arrangements and re‐arrangements, addressing the question of how an obdurate and ‘sticky’ temporal order may give way to palpable re‐arrangement of the ways in which subjects experience time. Eschewing a concern with linear homogenous time, it addresses the processes of re‐arrangement by understanding the dynamics of grave events, hauntings of the past, subtly changing rhythms of ever…
Decolonial Museology, Space Travel and the Mineral Cabinet
Taking the Africa Museum's mineral cabinet as a point of departure, I probe the entanglements of inorganic matter, coloniality, and mining for space travel. Through museum ethnography, and by thinking about minerality as a field that connects intra and extra-terrestrial interests, my research unpacks how colonial logics permeate relationships between earthbound and outer spaces. From this vantage point, I investigate how the calls for decolonial …
Sensing insecurity as skill
This special issue departs from the premise that the sensible dimensions of urban (in)security shape lived and embodied experiences of the city in ways that reflect and affect social and spatial forms of control, belonging, and inequality. As visceral as they may seem, we also contend that these sensorial registers of (in)security are far from given: they are learned and taught, whether consciously, or otherwise. Drawing on ideas of enskilment an…
Tuning into Heat
In this article, I address how discernments of alterity as insecurity are intimately connected to bodily perceptions and cultural elaborations of heat. Focusing on the interplay of temperature and danger, I look at the role of thermoception-as sensation, as ambient quality, as idiom, and as technology-in experiences and retellings of (in)security. These are themes I explore in relation to and beyond Hostile Environment Awareness Training (HEAT), …
Animals, beaches, stars and spirits
This Exploration highlights recent and emergent themes in the study of Caribbean ecologies across the social sciences and humanities. It draws particular attention to the field of black ecologies, which extends a longstanding engagement with the socio-ecological legacies of colonialism and plantation slavery, foregrounding the racialized nature of environmental harm while also underlining the various forms of worldmaking and free-dom afforded by …
Convivial atmotechnics
This article draws on ethnographic work with tour guides in Kingston and local radio animateurs in Abidjan to document their "atmotechnics" - the practices through which they enliven urban atmospheres. Through cross-contextual juxtapositions, we delve into the relational intricacies and contextual variegation of atmotechnics. Crucially, we point to their complexity and significance in cities whose atmospheres are fractured by racialized socio-eco…
Blackness as Matter
This is the introduction to a special section on Blackness as Matter. The collection builds upon a series of dialogues that emerged at two seminars, the first on “Urban Life at the Extensions,” which convened at the University of London Institute in Paris in 2023 and the second, “Ecologies of Black Living,” at the British Academy in London (2025). Both seminars were concerned with Black livingness and the current politics of inhabitation in times…
Ethnography Beyond Earth
What is at stake in engaging outer space ethnographically when colonial histories and power structures continue to shape its exploration and imagination? This question anchored a panel convened in November 2024 at the World Anthropological Union Congress (WAU) in Johannesburg, where we, Hanna Nieber, Anton Nikolotov, Alana Osbourne and Anna Lisa Ramella, explored the intersections of cosmic inquiry, colonial legacies, and ethnographic method. Uni…
Sociology (10 works) · Geographies of human-animal interactions (9 works) · Art (8 works) · Aesthetics (7 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Epistemology (5 works) · Movement (music (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Political science (4 works) · Politics (4 works)