Curriculum Vitae
Education
2007 Ph.D. Anthropology. The University of Chicago. 1998 M.A. Anthropology and English Literature and Linguistics. 1995-1996 Hong Kong University. Departments of Sociology and English.1992-1995 University of Basel, Switzerland. Anthropology and English Literature and Linguistics. Professional Employment
2021 - Professor. Maritime Anthropology and Cultures of Water. Department of Anthropology and Cultural Research, University of Bremen, Germany. 2014-2021 Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto at Mississauga, Toronto.2019 Visiting Guest Professor. The Graduate Institute. Geneva, Switzerland. October 14-21, 2019.2008-2014 Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto at Mississauga, Toronto.2007-2008 Collegiate Assistant Professor and William Rainey Harper Fellow, Society of Fellows, University of Chicago.Grants (last five years)
2020 SSHRC Insight Development Grant. “Mapping Community Opposition to Corporate Water Extraction in Ontario.” With Robert Case, University of Waterloo. 2020 SSHRC Community Engage Grant. “Cartographies of Thirst: Mapping Community Opposition to Nestlè Ground Water Extraction.” With Robert Case, University of Waterloo.2020 Arts and Science International Research Events Fund. University of Toronto. Received for “Distribute2020: A Virtual Conference.”2020 University of Toronto at Mississauga, Outreach, Conference, and Colloquia Fund. Received for “Distribute2020: A Virtual Conference.”2019 Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Conference and Workshop Grant. Title: “Distribute2020: A Virtual Conference" (with Mayanthi Fernando). Scholarly Work
Books
2023 A Vital Frontier: Water Insurgencies in Europe. Duke University Press. Open Access Version here. 2012 The Moral Neoliberal: Welfare and Citizenship in Italy. The University of Chicago Press. Special Collections
2023 What is a Financial Frontier? (with Andrea Ballestero). Special Collection for the Journal of Cultural Economy. Volume 16 (2023).2020 Editor (with Ethiraj Gabriel Dattatreyan). Distribute2020: An Invitation to Reuse, Recombine, Cite, Relate, and Teach! Cultural Anthropology Contributed Content. Teaching Tools.2012 Editor (with Nitzan Shoshan). Special Issue “Post-Fordist Affect.” Vol. 85(2). Articles and Other Writing
2024 Life as Debt versus Debt to Life: Water, Finance, Infrastructure. Accepted. Economy and Society.
2023 An Infinity of Traces: A Comment on Gens. BoasBlogs on Researching Capitalism, 23.05.2023
2023 Contract as Frontier Device, or, The Political Publics of Water Infrastructures. Journal of Cultural Economy. April 13, 2023.
2023 What is a Financial Frontier? Introduction to Special Collection. Journal of Cultural Economy. With Andrea Ballestero and Gloria Pérez-Rivera. Published online March 1.
2021 Review. Andreas Bieler. Fighting for Water: Resisting Water Privatization in Europe. Global Labor Studies.
2020 Water as Right, Water as Future. Public Books, December 4.2020 Virus and Commons. Blackwood Gallery. Society for the Diffusion of Knowledge Broadsheet. “Tilting.”2020 Das Notwendige Nass. Widerspruch: Beiträge zu Sozialistischer Politik. Heft 75: 45-52.2019 Review of “The Management of Hate” (Nitzan Shoshan). Ethnos. 2019 Toward a Social Infrastructure. In: E-Flux. / Liquid Utility. 2019 On Possession, Use, and Financialized Infrastructure. Cultural Anthropology. Theorizing the Contemporary: Usufruct. Edited by Lauren Bonilla and Rebecca Empson.2018. Sister Water. Blackwood Gallery. Society for the Diffusion of Knowledge Broadsheet. “Commuting.” Reprinted as “È possibile trattare l’acqua come una relazione?” in Gli Stati Generali dell´Acqua. Edited by Margherita Tezza.
2018 Commonwealth. In: History and Anthropology, Special Issue edited by Theodoros Rakoupolos and Knut Rio. Volume 29(3): 342-358. 2018 What is a Life? On Poverty and Race in Humanitarian Italy. Special Collection on Whiteness and Crisis in Europe. Berghahn Books.2018 Inquisitorial Reason. Cultural Anthropology. Theorizing the Contemporary: Time of Monsters. Edited by Dominic Boyer.
2018 Roundtable Review of Melinda Cooper’s “Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism.” Edited by Diane Labrosse and Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins. Vol. XIX (38).
2018 Review of Emiliana Armano, Arianna Bove, Annalisa Murgia (eds.), Mapping Precariousness, Labour Insecurity, and Uncertain Livelihoods: Subjectivities and Resistance. Heft 22 (2018) der Zeitschrift Sozial.Geschichte Online.
2018 Commentary. Current Anthropology, on “The social life of a mafia confession: Between talk and silence in Sicily" by Theodoros Rakopoulos. Vol. 60(11): 167-191.
2018 Review of Elizabeth Povinelli’s “Geontologies: A Requiem for Late Liberalism.” Anthropological Quarterly, January 2018.
2017 The Irish Water Insurgency: No More Blood From These Stones. Roar Magazine.
Spanish translation here. Bosnian translation here.
2017 The Price of Austerity: Vital Politics and the Struggle for Public Water in Italy. In: Anthropology Today. Special Collection edited by Laura Bear and Daniel Knight. Vol. 33(5): 20-23.
2017 The Body of Solidarity. Comparative Studies in Society and History (CSSH). Volume 59, pp. 96-126.
2016 Building an Archive of Vulnerability: #Guerrilla Archiving at #UofT. PPEH Lab. December 30, 2016.
2016 Anthropologies of Austerity. History and Anthropology. Online Version out April 2016. Print Copy June 2016.2016 Time of Monsters. Cultural Anthropology “Hot Spots” Series on “The Crisis of Liberalism.” 2016 Camp in the City. Cultural Anthropology “Hot Spots” Series on the “Refugee Crisis in Europe.” 2016 La Lezione dei GAP e il Diritto all’Acqua. Comune-Info. April.2016 How to Kill the Demos. Roar Magazine. January. 2015 Come si Uccide la Democrazia (Italian version of “How to Kill the Demos”). Comune-Info. December 2015.2014 On Economic Suicide. Anthropology News. March 2014. 2013 On Precariousness and the Ethical Imagination. The Year 2012 in Socio-Cultural Anthropology. American Anthropologist. Vol. 115(2): 297-311.2013 The Catholicization of Neoliberalism: On Love and Welfare in Lombardy, Italy. American Anthropologist. Vol. 115(3): 452-465. Reprinted in Janice Boddy and Michael Lambek (eds.). A Companion to the Anthropology of Religion. First Edition. Wiley and Sons, Inc. 2013. 2013 Integration. "Field Notes on Affect." Cultural Anthropology "Fieldsites." February 2013. 2011 On Affective Labor in Post-Fordist Italy. Cultural Anthropology. Vol. 26(1): 59-82.2009 Complexio Oppositorum. Notes on the Left in Neoliberal Italy. Public Culture. Volume 21(3): 495-515. 2006 With Jessica Greenberg. The Old World and its New Economy: On the “Third Age” in Contemporary Western Europe.” In Jennifer Cole, Deborah Durham (eds.). Generations and Globalization. Indiana University Press.2003 What Self in Self-Determination? Notes from the Frontiers of Transnational Indigenous Activism. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power. Vol. 10(2): 241-268.2001 Making Place at the United Nations. An Anthropological Inquiry into the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations. Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 16(3): 415-435.1997 Between the Fires. An Essay on two South African Novels. Journal of Postcolonial Writing. Vol. 36(1): 65-85.Honors and Awards
2017-2022 Elected Member of the Executive Board. Society for Cultural Anthropology.2017 Dean’s Excellence Award. University of Toronto at Mississauga.2016 Jackman Humanities Institute Faculty Fellowship, University of Toronto2014 Dean’s Excellence Award, University of Toronto at Mississauga. 2013 The Moral Neoliberal. Honorable Mention for the William A. Douglass Prize in Europeanist Anthropology. 2008 Sol Tax Dissertation Prize. Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago. Prize awarded to the dissertation that “combines highest intellectual merit with relevance to anthropology and action.”1995 Admitted to membership to the Swiss National Academic Foundation (Schweizerische Studienstiftung).Advisory Boards
2022- 2025 ReDigIm: Redistributive Imaginaries: Digitalization, culture, and prosocial contribution. Dr Rebecca Bramall, Principal Investigator. University of the Arts, London.
Teaching
Courses
Graduate Courses
Worlding the SeasRiot, Insurgency, RevolutionGenealogies of Anthropological Thought Anthropology of Labor Anthropology of the Modern State Metamorphosis of Citizenship Undergraduate Courses
Environmental JusticeAnthropologies of Water: On Values, Meanings, and FuturesThe End of Coal: An Ethnographic ApproachCapitalism and its Rebels: From Enclosure to CommonsOn State Benevolence, Abandonment, and Power: Anthropologies of Social Welfare (self-designed)Introduction to Socio-Cultural Anthropology Globalization and the Changing World of Work Money, Markets, and Gifts: Topics in Economic Anthropology Theory in Socio-Cultural Anthropology Student Supervision
Current Ph.D. Students
Ferda Nur Demirci Co-Supervision with Firat Boszcali (Toronto)Leslie Saunders Co-Supervision with Krista Maxwell (Toronto)Amanda Harvey-Sanchez Co-Supervision with Tania Li (Toronto)Jacob Bessen Co-Supervision with V. Napolitano (Toronto)
Muhammed Kaya Sole supervision (University of Bremen)
Amir Khorasani Sole supervision (University of Bremen)
Current Ph.D. Committee Memberships
Elisabetta Campagnola (Anthropology)Jessica McMillan (Geography)Shweta Banerjee (History) Omer Hacker (Religion)Current M.A. Students
Yichun Zhang (University of Bremen)Anja Binkowski (University of Bremen)
External Ph.D. Examinations
2023 Brett Richardson (Concordia University). Thesis Title: “Addiction > Recovery: Addiction Treatment, and the Transformation of Working Class White Men.”
2023 Kevin Yildirim (Cambridge University). Thesis Title: “Unjust Profit: Moral Economies of Recycling and Migration in Urban Turkey.”
2022 Annikki Herranen-Tabibi (Harvard University). Thesis Title: “Resurgent Ecologies of Care: An Ethnography from Deanuleahki, Sápmi.”
2021 Russell Henshaw (Oxford University). Thesis Title: “States of Indifference: Administering Solidarity in Post-Crisis Athens.”
2019 Celia Plender (University of Exeter). Thesis Title: "Self-help by the people! Politics, morality and change in British food co-ops."2018 Tess Altman (University College London). Thesis Title: “The domestic humanitarian: Responsibility and Citizenship in Australia.”2017 Ryan Foley (Oxford University). Thesis title: “It's need not greed': needs and values at work in an Italian social cooperative.”2017 Seung-Cheol Lee (Columbia University). Thesis Title: “Financialized Ethics: Governing Individual Bankruptcy in South Korea.”2015 Ivan Rajkovic (University of Manchester). Department of Social Anthropology. Ph.D. dissertation entitled "Struggles for Moral Ground: Problems with Work and Legitimacy in a Serbian Industrial Town." 2015 Kate Pendakis (York University). Department of Sociology. Ph.D. dissertation entitled "Political Genealogies of a Generation: Kin, Movement and Party in the Greek Diaspora." Ph.D. Students (Defended)
Bronwyn Frey “Beta Capitalism: The Financialization and Minimum Viability of Food Delivery Labour.” Defended 2021.
Tessa Bonduelle “Outsourcing Crisis: Resettling Refugees and Sheltering Asylum Seekers in France.” Defended 2021
Jing Jing Liu "Fake Goods and Counterfeit Time: Nigerian Entrepreneurs in a Time of China Rising." Defended 2021. Vivian Solana “Negotiating Belonging in an Imagined Global Community: The Practice of Women’s Rights in the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR).” Supervision since September 2009; Defended 2016)Giovanna Parmigiani “The Political Life of Indignation: Practices of Dignity and Indignation among Feminist Women in Salento.” Supervision since 2011; Defended 2015. Hollis Moore “The Politics of Relatedness in a Prison in Northwest Brazil.” Supervision since September 2011; Defended 2017.Sandy Oh "Aspiring toward "the Academic 1%": Adolescents, anxiety, and precariousness of the privileged in Seoul, South Korea." Defended 2019Sardar Saadi “City and Resistance in Kurdistan: Poverty, Urban Development., and the Struggle for Democratic Autonomy in Diyarbakir” Co-supervision with Tania Li. Defended 2020. Salvatore Giusto: “Vox Populi": Commodified Aesthetics and the Illicit Political Economy in Naples, Italy. Defended 2020.M.A. Students (Defended)
2020-2021 Tomoya Boehm (“Incoming Migrants and Money: A Case Study of WeChat in Nova Scotia.”) 2017-2018 Suvane Ariyanayagam (“Corporate Ethnographies”)2016-2017 Malinda Grey (“Indigeneity and Racial Sterotyping”)2016-2017 Marlo Young-Sponga (“The Global Growth of Volunteer Charities”)2016-2017 Pedrom Nasiri (co-supervised with Ivan Kalmar)2014-2015 Danco Jaccard (“Patagonia Rebelde: Mapuche Identity through the Media”)2012-2013 Sardar Saadi (“Altering Resistance: State, Market, and the Politics of Urban Planning in Pro-Kurdish Diyarbakir Municipality, Turkey,” co-supervised with Tania Li) 2011-2012 Matt Hilder (“Governing the Social in Neoliberal Britain”, co-supervised with Jesook Song)Ph.D. Committees
(University of Toronto) Defended
Kori Allen (Ph.D. Defended)Bezhad Sarmadi (Ph.D. Defended)Stephen Campell (Ph.D. Defended)Aaron Kappeler (Ph.D. Defended)Asli Zengin (Ph.D. Defended)Chantelle Leblanc (Defended 2019)Lisa Davidson (Defended May 2019)B.A. Thesis Advising
Nathalie Vallee (Honours B.A. Specialist in International Development Studies). University of Toronto at Scarborough. (Co-Supervision)Amal Gedleh (B.A. Specialist in Anthropology). University of Toronto at Mississauga Administrative Positions and Service
University of Toronto
2020-2022 Advisory Board. Blackwood Gallery. University of Toronto at Mississauga.2020-2021 TA-Coordinator. University of Toronto at Mississauga2019 Center for Urban Environments, Post-Doctoral Award Selection Committee (Social Sciences). July 2019. 2019 Tenure Evaluation (Teaching Portfolio). Dr. Sarah Hillewaert. 2018-2019 Dean’s Representative. Search for African American Literature TT Position. University of Toronto at Mississaugua.2018-2019 UTM, Department of Anthropology, Search Committee for Anthropology TT-hire.2016-2017 UTM, Department of Anthropology, Search Committee for Anthropology TT-hire.2017-2018 Departmental Professionalization Committee2016-2018 UTM, PTR-Committee2016 Chair, Third-Year Review Committee for Dr. Sarah Hillewaert2016 Dean’s Representative for a job-search at the Department of Economics. 2014-2015 UTM Research Council2013-2015 Graduate Placement Officer2012 UTM Chair Search Committee2011-2013 Ceres (Center for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at the Munk Center for Global Affairs) Advisory Board2012 Ceres (Center for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at the Munk Center for Global Affairs) Admissions Committee2011-2012 UTM Anthropology Strategic Planning Committee2009-2013 Member, Department of Anthropology Colloquium Committee. 2009-2010 Faculty Sponsor of the socio-cultural and linguistic works-in-progress series. Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto 2008-2009 Member of the Vice-Dean Graduate Office Speaker Series Committee. University of Toronto at Mississauga2008-2009 Co-organizer (with Tania Li) of the socio-cultural and linguistic works-in-progress series. Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto.Other Professional Activities
External Professional Service
Grant Reviewer. ERC (European Research Council). 2019 and 2020Tenure Reviews (Simon Fraser University, Columbia University, SUNY Binghampton)Conference Organization
2019-2020 Co-Organizer, with Mayanthi Fernando (UC Santa Cruz); Gabriel Dattatreyan (Goldsmiths, London), and Arjun Shankar (Colby College) of Distribute2020: A Nearly-Carbon-Neutral Conference organized by the Society for Cultural Anthropology and the Society for Visual Anthropology. May 7, 8, and 9, 2020.Editorial Boards, Advisory Boards, and Prize Committees
2022 Assessor for the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Research Fellowships Competition at Gonville & Caius
College, Cambridge University.
2022 Member of the Jury, William A. Douglass Prize in Europeanist Anthropology for ethnographies published in 2021-2022
2022 Prize Chair, Cultural Horizons Prize, Society for Cultural Anthropology
2022-2024 Editorial Board Member, Cultural Anthropology.
2021 Prize Chair, Cultural Horizons Prize, Society for Cultural Anthropology2020- Advisory Board, Wellington Water Watchers, Declaration for a new Water Ethic2019-2021 Advisory Board. Blackwell Gallery, University of Toronto at Mississauga2019-present Member to the Editorial Board, American Ethnologist.
2019 Jack Goody Prize Committee. Comparative Studies in Society and History.
2017-present Member to the Editorial Board, Cambridge Journal of Anthropology.
2017-present Member to the Editorial Board, Cultural Anthropology.
2016-2018 Member of the Reviewer Panel of the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research2014 Clifford Geertz Prize Committee. American Anthropological Association. 2013 Council for European Studies (CES). Mellon Dissertation Completion Fellowship Committee. 2012 Council for European Studies (CES). Conference Organization Committee. 2011-2013 Elected Member-at-Large. Society for the Anthropology of Europe (Subsection of the AAA)2009-2011 Elected Publications and Special Projects Committee Chair. Society for the Anthropology of Europe (Subsection of the AAA)Manuscript Reviewer (articles)
American Ethnologist; American Anthropologist; Anthropological Quarterly; Anthropological Theory; Comparative Studies in Society and History; Cultural Anthropology; Current Anthropology; Dialectical Anthropology; Social Anthropology; Anthropology of Southern Africa; JRAI; Medical Anthropology; Focaal. Manuscript Reviewer (books)
Duke University Press, University of Chicago Press, Cornell University Press.