Ocean Worlds

The professorship I hold in Bremen is dedicated to “Maritime Anthropology and Cultures of Water,” which means that I will expand my interest in the anthropologies of water, environmental and infrastructural politics, and global extractive regimes to include the oceanic as well. I look forward to building a research profile among a group of institutions well known for their maritime expertise, notably Marum, the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, the Alfred Wegener Institut, the Leibniz Zentrum für Marine Tropenforschung, and the Deutsche Schiffahrts Museum.

I am currently teaching several classes that center the oceanic (“Worlding the Seas,” “Mare Nostrum,” and “Rights of Nature”). Most recently, I taught a Research Seminar on the Halligen in the North Sea, the resulting art-works and ethnographic findings of which are shown in Hamburg at the amazing MARKK Museum´s 8-month-long exhibit Water Stories.

I am also preparing a multi-sited research project on ocean-floors – from their charting to the discovery of how ocean floors interact with larger Earth systems, to how humanity can deal with everything from seafloor marine litter to deep-sea drilling and purple zombie sea urchins. I am excited to work with colleagues at the University of Bremen´s Marum, who are managing a Cluster of Excellence dedicated to the study of the Ocean Floor as “Earth´s Uncharted Interface.”

More soon!