Nya medarbetare
April 2024
Jennifer Lorin, postdoktor
Jag doktorerade vid University of Paris Cité och kommer senast från en tjänst som universitetslektor vid University of Paris-Est Créteil. Min avhandling fokuserar på hur det går till att bli kung i södra Benin genom en etnografisk studie av ett fyrtiotal kungars och kungakvinnors karriärer och dagliga aktiviteter. Sedan 1990 har vi över hela den afrikanska kontinenten bevittnat en "kungarnas återkomst". I Benin innebär detta en stor ökning av kungliga anspråk. Min forskning undersöker denna process, särskilt genom begreppen usurpation och den efterföljande legitimeringen. Att inneha makt, erövra den, förhindra dess fall, men också att sprida den, kräver specifika resurser och att anpassa sig till flera begränsningar, skyldigheter och förbud.
Det är i denna anda som jag i min postdoktorala forskning i Nigeria fortsätter att undersöka de begränsningar som muslimska Yoruba-kungar ställs inför i samband med en kunglighet som är intimt kopplad till vodun-religionen. Samtidigt kommer jag omarbeta min avhandling till en bok på engelska och franska.
Januari 2024
Kristina Öhman, postdoktor
Jag är doktor i etnologi, och disputerade hösten 2023 med min avhandling Ett tjejligt rum. Tidningen Starlet 1966-1996 (Gidlunds förlag). Avhandlingen handlar om hur tjejtidningenStarlet blev en gemenskap och ett rum för de unga tjejläsarna, och ett socialt medium innan internets genomslag. Sedan 2024 är jag anställd som postdoktoral forskare på UU med ett forskningsprojekt om det nedlagda Sandträsk sanatorium i Norrbotten, vilket jag ämnar diskutera utifrån teman som berättande, plats och folklore.
Camelia Dewan, biträdande universitetslektor
Dr Camelia Dewan is an environmental anthropologist focusing on the anthropology of development. She holds a PhD in Social Anthropology and Environment from the University of London (SOAS/Birkbeck) and is an Associate Senior Lecturer in Cultural Anthropology at Uppsala University examining the socio-environmental effects of shipbreaking in Bangladesh. Dr Dewan is the author of Misreading the Bengal Delta: Climate Change, Development and Livelihoods in Coastal Bangladesh (University of Washington Press, 2021) and co-editor of two special issues: "Fluid Dispossessions: Contested Waters in Capitalist Natures” (Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology) and "Scaled Ethnographies of Toxic Flows" (Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space).
September 2023
Jakob Löfgren, biträdande universitetslektor
As a folklorist and interested in popular culture, my research interests lie within storytelling and folklore, often within popular culture. The common streak is the application of folkloric theory on contemporary material, which means one may end up (almost) anywhere. I've written about everything from fandom and bad vibes at work, to stories of boyhood, ceremonial playing and memes.
Mahmoud Keshavarz, biträdande universitetslektor
I am a Docent in Cultural Anthropology and have engaged in a transdisciplinary research and teaching practice situated at the intersection of anthropology, design studies and critical border studies with a particular focus on the question of (de-)coloniality. My work addresses the violent yet imaginative capacities of materialities of borders and (im)mobilities. I have done ethnographic work on materialities of undocumented lives in Europe, practices of smuggling and border transgression, and colonial imaginaries of humanitarian design and innovation. I am author of The Design Politics of the Passport: Materiality, Immobility, and Dissent (Bloomsbury, 2019) and co-editor of Seeing Like a Smuggler: Borders from Below (Pluto Press, 2022). Previously, I have hold teaching and research positions at Malmö University, Uppsala University, Stockholm University and University of Gothenburg in both anthropology and design studies. Between 2019 and 2022 I was co-editor-in-chief of the journal Design and Culture. I am also co-founder of Decolonizing Design collective and Critical Border Studies Network.
Currently I am working on my next book tentatively titled Towards a Design Anthropology of Borders which is a visual-textual narrative of how borders and bordering practices are shaped by the materials, images, and technologies originated within colonial and liberal discourses and how they may shape in return bordered or no-border imaginations and worldviews, normalized or unsettled through technological consumption and use.
Metztli Sarai Hernández Garcia, doktorand
I am a social anthropologist who specializes in land-related affairs and indigenous rights, with an MA in environmental anthropology from the Center for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology (CEISAS). I’ve engaged in collaborations with both private and public institutions, contributing to the development of territorial programs and initiatives with a comprehensive and culturally sensitive approach in México and Peru. Currently, I’m a Doctoral student at Uppsala University as part of the C-urge project, investigating the repercussions of the Carbon Credit Market on the territorial rights of the Qom people in Formosa, Argentina.
Matias Menalled, doktorand
I studied Sociocultural Anthropology at the Universidad de Buenos Aires in Argentina (2011-2017) and my Master in Anthropology at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (2018-2020). Between 2016-2018 and 2020-2023, I worked as a Scientific Application Specialist with orientation in Disaster Risk Management at the Servicio Meteorológico Nacional in Argentina.
Since September 2023, I am a Ph.D. candidate in Cultural Anthropology at Uppsala University in Sweden and a member of the C-URGE Doctoral Network of Anthropology of Global Climate Urgency (2023-2027) funded by Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions. My doctoral research focuses on technology and expertise in the urgency of drought in Argentina. The aim of this PhD project is to gain ethnographic knowledge about how water scarcity and drought are understood, framed and managed by different social actors in the Esteros del Iberá (Corrientes, Argentina) through an anthropological perspective.