Research

I am a social and political anthropologist interested in how humans resort to and commemorate political violence.

My current book project Beyond What’s Left: Nicaraguan Transnational Solidarity and Political Exile in Germany is a deep analysis of revolutionary afterlives on a global scale. Based on sixteen months of multisited ethnographic fieldwork, I examine the transnational solidarity movement that emerged in Berlin as a response to the brutal repression of mass protests in 2018 in Nicaragua which ties to the remnants of the Nicaraguan Sandinista revolution in 1979. Examining the negotiations between recent Nicaraguan political exiles, the Nicaraguan community in Berlin, and (former West-) German solidarity brigades, it analyzes how political, cultural, and historical linkages have informed different interpretations and practices of solidarity.

My current research project explores political exile in the 21st century and resistance under authoritarian states by focusing on Nicaraguan exiles’ digitally disseminated poetry.

My next research project explores broader questions about radical leftwing militancy, urban guerrilla tactics, and political violence among the former West German Red Army Faction (RAF), and how these memories of violence have been strategically used by Germany’s far right.

I received my PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo in 2023 and I am currently a senior research associate (akademische Rätin auf Zeit) at the University of Bayreuth’s Chair for Social and Cultural Anthropology.

I am also the co-editor of Anthropology in Action (together with Pardis Shafafi).

My research has been supported by the Wedel Jarlsbergs Fund for International Research, the Sylff Young Leaders Fellowship Fund, the Forum for Philosophy of Science at the University of Oslo, the Ryoichi Sasakawa Post-Doctoral Research Grant (2022 and 2024), the Individual Development Grant of the United University Professionals at New York State, the Professional Staff Senate Professional Development Grant at Binghamton University, the scholarship for equal opportunities at the University of Bayreuth and the Ibero-American Institute in Berlin.

I am also a newly minted early career fellow at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research at Bielefeld University (“Das Junge ZIF”).

My pronouns are she / her.