By Jun.-Prof. Dr. Julia Binter
Julia Binter, Argelander Professor for Critical Museum and Heritage Studies, and Sascha Sistenich, Doctoral Fellow at the Institute for Cultural Anthropology, are organising the lecture series “Engaged Anthropology. Reimagining Social Transformation in Collaborative Anthropological Research“ in the winter term 2024/25. Join us at the Global Heritage Lab at P26 or online!
Lunch Lecture
Tuesday 12 – 2 PM (c.t.)
Location: Global Heritage Lab, Poststraße 26, 53111 Bonn
(wheelchair accessible)
Everyone is cordially invited to bring lunch and eat with us. For online participation, please register in advance at: ltruemne@uni-bonn.de. The lecture will not be recorded. Further information on participation and examination modalities will be provided in the first session and via eCampus and Basis.
In the rapidly evolving context of modern democratic societies, challenged by global movements for climate justice, gender equality, LGBTQ rights, indigenous sovereignty etc., there emerges a pressing need for innovative approaches to social and ecological crises. The lunch lecture series “Engaged Anthropology: Reimagining Social Transformation in Collaborative Anthropological Research”, offers an in-depth exploration into how cultural anthropology can actively contribute to understanding and fostering societal transformation.
Engaged anthropology, public anthropology or participatory research are approaches that aim to strengthen the link between science and society. Our research, especially in the field of anthropology, should not take place in an isolated (and often hierarchical) manner, but should be applicable to non-academic areas. These research approaches aim to explore and influence social reality in partnership. Social actors are involved as co-researchers or creative methods bring science and society closer together.
This lunch lecture uniquely positions itself as a conduit between theoretical knowledge and practical research. We navigate through the multifaceted realms of engaged anthropology and collaborative research across the globe presented in the lecture series — from indigenous movements in Latin America to interventions in restitution negotiations of stolen art in Namibia, and to the fervent demands for the recognition and democratic participation of queer people in Europe. Through engaged, activist, or collaborative research approaches, we aim to foster a profound understanding of anthropology as a method of taking responsibility for the world’s past and future.
The lunch lecture series fosters a dialogue among various anthropological sub-disciplines and a myriad of civil society, institutional, and activist actors. By integrating these discussions with theoretical knowledge and research practice, students are equipped with the insights and tools necessary for spearheading innovative contributions to societal issues. Moreover, this lecture series lays the groundwork for building invaluable networks that students can leverage in their future research careers.
Sessions of the lecture series
Bios
Sela K. Adjei is an artist and researcher based in Ghana, and a lecturer at the University of Media, Arts and Communication (Institute of Film and Television), where he teaches philosophy, digital imaging, digital art and computer application design. He studied Communication Design and African Art at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi and obtained his PhD in African Studies at the Institute of African Studies in University of Ghana in Legon. He is co-editor of the volume Fifteen Colonial Thefts: A Guide to Looted African Heritage in Museums, published in 2024 by Pluto Books. His PhD thesis investigates the philosophy of art in Vodu religion and criticises European conceptions of Vodu art and aesthetics. His research interests include West African spiritual epistemologies, transnational museum studies and the development of creative industries.
Beate Binder studied at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, where she also completed her PhD at the Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences in 1999. In 2007, she completed her habilitation thesis at the Humboldt University of Berlin, in which she was interested in urban ethnological perspectives. After working as a professor of folklore/cultural anthropology at the University of Hamburg from 2006 to 2008, she moved back to Berlin, where she worked as managing director of the Institute for European Ethnology until 2018 and as spokesperson for the Center for Transdisciplinary Studies since 2010. As her professorship is located at the interface between European ethnology and the Center for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies, her current fields of research are located in both areas. For example, she is currently working in the fields of legal anthropology, the anthropology of the political and the history of feminist cultural anthropology.
Čarna Brković studied European Ethnology at the University Belgrad before completing her PhD at the University of Manchester. She then taught as a postdoc at the University of Göttingen and in Regensburg and simultaneously worked at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Central European University. In April 2023, she started as a professor of Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology at the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz. In her research, she explores inequalities, power, social complexities and ambiguities and how these influence the everyday lives of diverse actors. Currently, she is also working on a book manuscript with the provisional title “Worldmakings. Realigning Humanitarianism from Yugoslav Socialism to Neoliberal Capitalism in the Balkans”.
Michaela Doutch completed both her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees here at the University of Bonn and graduated in 2015. In 2016, she started her PhD at the Department of Southeast Asian Studies, which she completed in 2022 and for which she dealt with women workers in the garment factories of Cambodia. Since October 2022, she has been working at the institute as a post-doc and continues her research on the topics of labor, agency, social movements and gender and feminism.
Kristina Großmann finished her PhD in 2013 at the Goethe University Frankfurt. In her work, she dealt with spaces of action of Muslim activists. In 2019, she completed her habilitation with the title: “Conflicting Ecologies and Categories of Differentiation in Southeast Asia and South Asia” at the University of Passau. Here she also worked as Assistant Professor at the Chair of Comparative Development and Cultural Studies with a Focus on Southeast Asia until 2020 and led the research project “FuturEN. Governance, Identities and Future along Categories of Differentiation. The Case of Coal Mining in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia.” Since 2020 she has been Professor for Anthropology of Southeast Asia at the University of Bonn. Her research interests include human-environment relations, sustainability, asymmetrical dependencies and gender, ethnicity and religion in Southeast Asia with a focus on Indonesia.
Sarian Jarosz (he/them) is a Humanitarian LGBTQI+ Advisor at Save the Children/Humanitarian, Leadership Academy and a co-founder of Queer Without Borders, which is an umbrella group supporting LGBTQI+ refugees in Poland at the borders with Belarus and Ukraine. In addition, he is a Research Coordinator at the Migration Consortium and has been formerly an investigator on LGBTQI+ rights at Amnesty International Poland. Last but not least, he conducted investigations on criminalization of solidarity in Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and Uganda.
Sinah Kloß is a visiting professor of Anthropology of the Americas at the University of Bonn. She holds a PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology from Heidelberg University. Since 2020 she is leader of the research group “Marking Power: Embodied Dependencies, Haptic Regimes and Body Modification” at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies. Her current research discusses the sensory history of body modification and touch, and focuses on the interrelation of religion and biopower in Hindu Suriname, Guyana and Trinidad. She is also interested in sensory and medical anthropology, concepts of birth and pregnancy, ethnographic methodology and intersectionality, New Materialist and feminist theory.
Yann LeGall is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Art History of the Technical University in Berlin in the DZK-funded project “Repertory of Colonial Plunder”. He was a member of the project “The Restitution of Knowledge”, led in partnership with the University of Oxford. Together with Sela K. Adjei, he is also co-editor of Fifteen Colonial Thefts. His work investigates the enduring presence of colonial spoils of war from so-called “punitive” expeditions in German museums. His PhD thesis examined memory cultures in and after the repatriation of ancestral remains to African countries and communities. As a member of the initiatives Berlin Postkolonial e.V. and Postcolonial Potsdam, he has led guided tours in both cities since 2014 and developed a digital audio guide on colonial history in Potsdam.
Oliver Pye completed his PhD in 2003 with the title: “Khor Jor Kor – Forest Politics in Thailand.” In his thesis, he dealt with forest politics in Thailand and looked at a successful movement of small scale farmers. He continued this focus in his further career, in which he worked in various positions on e.g. working conditions in Cambodia, the political ecology of biodiversity and the development of the palm industry in the region.
Olga Reznikova studied from 2000 to 2003 in St. Petersburg before she joined the Studienkolleg at the FU Berlin from 2004 to 2005. In 2013, she completed her Master’s degree at the Institute for Folklore Studies/European Ethnology at LMU Munich and went on to complete her PhD on social protest at LMU and the University of Göttingen. She initially worked as a research assistant at LMU until 2015 before moving to Göttingen, where she worked until 2021. In 2023, she worked at a Research Unit at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, where she studied the History of Emotions. Since October 2023, she has been a university assistant for European Ethnology at the University of Innsbruck. Olga Reznikova’s research focuses on protest and movement research, historical research of the 1920s, colonial history and racism in Russia, popular culture and Jewish cultural studies.
Lisa Riedner leads the Emmy Noether Junior Research Group ‘Contestations of “the Social”’ (2022-2028) at the Institute for Empirical Cultural Studies and European Ethnology at LMU Munich.
Remi Joseph-Salisbury is Reader in Sociology at the University of Manchester, with interests in the study of racisms and antiracisms, particularly in the contexts of education and policing. He is also a visiting scholar at the Center for Place, Culture and Politics at the City University of New York. Remi is co-author of Anti-Racist Scholar-Activism (2021, Manchester University Press) which was awarded a 2023 Society of Professors of Education outstanding book award. He is co-editor of The Fire Now: Anti-racism in Times of Explicit Racial Violence (2018, Zed Books) and author of Black Mixed Race Men (2018, Emerald Publishing), winner of the Philip Abram Prize for best first book is Sociology. He has recently written on issues including the presence of police in schools, the securitisation of university campuses, the policing of the pandemic, police abolition, and the enduring nature of racism in British education.Remi is also a steering group member of the Northern Police Monitoring Project, a police abolitionist group based in Greater Manchester, the No Police in Schools campaign, and a member of the Centre of Dynamics on Ethnicity (CoDE).
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