Prof. Dr. Sandra Calkins
Sandra Calkins
Professor for Social and Cultural Anthropology with a focus on Africa
E-Mail: sandra.calkins@uni-bayreuth.de
Phone: +49 (0)921 / 55-4106
Building GW II Room 0.16
Office hours: Please make an appointment via DFN-Planner
Profil
since 3/25
Professorship (W3), Social and Cultural Anthropology with a Focus on Africa, University of Bayreuth
2023-2025
Associate Professor for Environment, Technology & Decolonial Knowledge, Section “Knowledge, Transformation & Society”, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
2018 -2023
Assistant Professor (W1), Social and Cultural Anthropology, Freie Universität Berlin
2014-2018
Research fellow (PostDoc), Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle
2014
PhD in Anthropology, University of Leipzig: highest distinction “opus eximium”, Leipzig
CV
CV
since 3/25
Professorship (W3), Social and Cultural Anthropology with a Focus on Africa, University of Bayreuth
2023-2025
Associate Professor for Environment, Technology & Decolonial Knowledge, Section “Knowledge, Transformation & Society”, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
2018 -2023
Assistant Professor (W1), Social and Cultural Anthropology, Freie Universität Berlin
2014-2018
Research fellow (PostDoc), Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle
2014
PhD in Anthropology, University of Leipzig: highest distinction “opus eximium”, Leipzig
- Economic anthropology
- Environmental anthropology
- STS
- Environmental humanities
- Medical anthropology
Research Key Areas
Research Key Areas
- Economic anthropology
- Environmental anthropology
- STS
- Environmental humanities
- Medical anthropology
Knowing and Growing. Anthropology of and in late capitalist environments
Environmental crises, along with the questions how we can understand, regulate and tackle them, have undoubtedly moved to the center of socioeconomic, political and technoscientific controversies. Too often responses to contemporary environmental predicaments resort to technoscientific fixes without addressing systemic issues, such as the intimate interweaving of our environments in capitalist production. Our research explores how knowledge about the environment emerges and interacts with knowledge about the economy, how such knowledges are circulated, contradict themselves, are invalidated, politicized and thus shape the futures of health and well-being for humans and other-than-human beings alike. Next to dominant forms of knowing, such as the modern sciences, institutions, technologies and infrastructures, we attend to lingering asymmetries and hierarchies in knowledge production and foreground unrecognized forms of knowledge and expertise. We treat questions of knowledge production - whose knowledge has value and authority, what and who is heard - as deeply political questions, and address them in dialog with the work of indigenous thinkers and de-, post- and anti-colonial knowledge-creators. By investigating marginalized forms of knowing and growing, we explore alternatives beyond the capitalist growth register that has colonized our societal imagination for too long and examine the difficult possibilities that are being incubated in the present in the midst of loss and capitalist destruction. Can we condense ways of living that resist the ideology of limitless growth? And what difficulties does such an endeavor encounter when we think it from the perspective of mundane everyday practices, humble more-than-human relationalities and in view of lives and worlds beyond Western Europe?
To join activities, reading groups and events, please get in touch with skaafrika@uni-bayreuth.de
Knowing and Growing. Anthropology of and in late capitalist environments
Environmental crises, along with the questions how we can understand, regulate and tackle them, have undoubtedly moved to the center of socioeconomic, political and technoscientific controversies. Too often responses to contemporary environmental predicaments resort to technoscientific fixes without addressing systemic issues, such as the intimate interweaving of our environments in capitalist production. Our research explores how knowledge about the environment emerges and interacts with knowledge about the economy, how such knowledges are circulated, contradict themselves, are invalidated, politicized and thus shape the futures of health and well-being for humans and other-than-human beings alike. Next to dominant forms of knowing, such as the modern sciences, institutions, technologies and infrastructures, we attend to lingering asymmetries and hierarchies in knowledge production and foreground unrecognized forms of knowledge and expertise. We treat questions of knowledge production - whose knowledge has value and authority, what and who is heard - as deeply political questions, and address them in dialog with the work of indigenous thinkers and de-, post- and anti-colonial knowledge-creators. By investigating marginalized forms of knowing and growing, we explore alternatives beyond the capitalist growth register that has colonized our societal imagination for too long and examine the difficult possibilities that are being incubated in the present in the midst of loss and capitalist destruction. Can we condense ways of living that resist the ideology of limitless growth? And what difficulties does such an endeavor encounter when we think it from the perspective of mundane everyday practices, humble more-than-human relationalities and in view of lives and worlds beyond Western Europe?
To join activities, reading groups and events, please get in touch with skaafrika@uni-bayreuth.de
Julio Campos Simoes “Sowing hope. An ethnography of rainfed agriculture in Cabo Verde”, BIGSAS (Primary supervision)
Anna Heiger (Humboldt Universität, Second supervision)
completed
Brandaan Huigen “Dangerous things. Crime and the social life of stolen objects in South Africa” (Second supervision), FU Berlin, defended 15.3.2023
Cornelia Ertl “Planting Ambiguities. Practicing Care at the Botanic Garden” (Primary supervision), FU Berlin, defended 24.5.2024.
Wisse van Engelen “Human-wildlife interactions in Nambia” (co-promoter), University of Twente, defended 23.4.2026.
Julio Campos Simoes “Sowing hope. An ethnography of rainfed agriculture in Cabo Verde”, BIGSAS (Primary supervision)
Anna Heiger (Humboldt Universität, Second supervision)
completed
Brandaan Huigen “Dangerous things. Crime and the social life of stolen objects in South Africa” (Second supervision), FU Berlin, defended 15.3.2023
Cornelia Ertl “Planting Ambiguities. Practicing Care at the Botanic Garden” (Primary supervision), FU Berlin, defended 24.5.2024.
Wisse van Engelen “Human-wildlife interactions in Nambia” (co-promoter), University of Twente, defended 23.4.2026.
Profil
CV
since 3/25
Professorship (W3), Social and Cultural Anthropology with a Focus on Africa, University of Bayreuth
2023-2025
Associate Professor for Environment, Technology & Decolonial Knowledge, Section “Knowledge, Transformation & Society”, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands
2018 -2023
Assistant Professor (W1), Social and Cultural Anthropology, Freie Universität Berlin
2014-2018
Research fellow (PostDoc), Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle
2014
PhD in Anthropology, University of Leipzig: highest distinction “opus eximium”, Leipzig
Research Key Areas
- Economic anthropology
- Environmental anthropology
- STS
- Environmental humanities
- Medical anthropology
Knowing and Growing. Anthropology of and in late capitalist environments
Environmental crises, along with the questions how we can understand, regulate and tackle them, have undoubtedly moved to the center of socioeconomic, political and technoscientific controversies. Too often responses to contemporary environmental predicaments resort to technoscientific fixes without addressing systemic issues, such as the intimate interweaving of our environments in capitalist production. Our research explores how knowledge about the environment emerges and interacts with knowledge about the economy, how such knowledges are circulated, contradict themselves, are invalidated, politicized and thus shape the futures of health and well-being for humans and other-than-human beings alike. Next to dominant forms of knowing, such as the modern sciences, institutions, technologies and infrastructures, we attend to lingering asymmetries and hierarchies in knowledge production and foreground unrecognized forms of knowledge and expertise. We treat questions of knowledge production - whose knowledge has value and authority, what and who is heard - as deeply political questions, and address them in dialog with the work of indigenous thinkers and de-, post- and anti-colonial knowledge-creators. By investigating marginalized forms of knowing and growing, we explore alternatives beyond the capitalist growth register that has colonized our societal imagination for too long and examine the difficult possibilities that are being incubated in the present in the midst of loss and capitalist destruction. Can we condense ways of living that resist the ideology of limitless growth? And what difficulties does such an endeavor encounter when we think it from the perspective of mundane everyday practices, humble more-than-human relationalities and in view of lives and worlds beyond Western Europe?
To join activities, reading groups and events, please get in touch with skaafrika@uni-bayreuth.de
Julio Campos Simoes “Sowing hope. An ethnography of rainfed agriculture in Cabo Verde”, BIGSAS (Primary supervision)
Anna Heiger (Humboldt Universität, Second supervision)
completed
Brandaan Huigen “Dangerous things. Crime and the social life of stolen objects in South Africa” (Second supervision), FU Berlin, defended 15.3.2023
Cornelia Ertl “Planting Ambiguities. Practicing Care at the Botanic Garden” (Primary supervision), FU Berlin, defended 24.5.2024.
Wisse van Engelen “Human-wildlife interactions in Nambia” (co-promoter), University of Twente, defended 23.4.2026.