The film portrait explains how the Chair of Visual and Media Anthropology builds competences through a research-based education. Besides familiarising themselves with theoretical backgrounds and methods, students are encouraged to conduct small and medium-size scientific projects of their own. Teamwork and face to face supervision are centre-stage in this initiative.

Among the more „classical“ ethnographic techniques, such as participatory observation or interviews, the video portrait invites viewers to see how students of Visual and Media Anthropology learn to use different media technologies, e.g. media analysis and annotation, film technique and audio recording, video and audio editing, or the production of interactive slideshows. The students integrate those multimedia research engagements into „Visual Essays“. This innovative form of scientific publication allows the students as well as academics to pay more attention to the ways in which different media impact cultural practice and social change in transcultural worlds.