Zahlavi

Department of Ecological Anthropology

Department of Ecological Anthropology

Who we are

The Department of Ecological Anthropology is home to a group of scholars who study the dimensions of people’s socio-ecological relations across a diverse range of contexts. We explore human experience, practices, and communities as inextricably a part of more-than-human lives and worlds, and as an environmentally embedded social relation of provision and care. An ethnographic understanding of these lived interrelationships is of critical importance during the Anthropocene.

The department's research reflects on established categories and modes of thinking while offering novel ways to approach and understand pressing questions facing contemporary society. Our subjects are of global importance, yet we are also attuned to those considered 'marginal' and 'abject,' finding inspiration in alternative centres of power. Our methods and frameworks are drawn from multiple academic fields, including science studies, critical geography, economic anthropology, medical anthropology, and multispecies studies. Our fieldsites include Czech Republic, Netherlands, Ukraine, Serbia, England, Australia, Russian Altai, and northeast India. The Department of Ecological Anthropology is a team whose work seeks to engage in conversation and collaboration with scholars both within and outside of our fields of expertise.

People

Core Researchers

BROŽ, Luděk
(Head of Department)

JEHLIČKA, Petr

SOSNA, Daniel

 

Postgraduate researchers

KUEN, Laura

 

Postgraduate research associates

KYEREKO, Barbora

STEHLÍKOVÁ, Barbora

MAŠEK, Pavel


 

 

Postdoctoral researchers

KEIL, Paul G. (Deputy Head of Department)

O'MAHONY, Kieran

MELLES, Maike

SZCZYGIELSKA, Marianna

THIEMANN, André

 

Research Associates

ARREGUI, Aníbal G. 

GIESER, Thorsten, 

MARVIN, Garry 

POHL HARRISSON, Annika, 

von ESSEN, Erica 

VATÉ, Virginie 

 

Key research areas

Key research areas

  • Geopolitics of knowledge production

  • Sustainable food systems

  • Moral dimensions of economies

  • Changing waste regimes

  • Veterinary anthropology

  • Biosecurity & nonhuman health
  • Anthropology of hunting

  • Multispecies methods

  • Resources & sustainability
  • Human-animal relations 

  • Feral being and ecologies
  • History of sciences in Central Europe

  • Political economy of post-socialism

  • Ecologies of care

  • Multispecies eating relations

  • Multimodal knowledge production

  • Memory & landscape temporalities

  • Landscapes and cultural heritage

 

Projects

 

Outputs 2022-2025

Monographs, Edited volumes & Special issues

Monographs

Keil, P. G. 2024. The Presence of Elephants: Sharing lives and landscapes in Assam. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. 

Thiemann, A. 2024. The Politics of Relations: How Self-Government, Infrastructures, and Care Transform the State in Serbia, Oxford: Berghahn Press.

Broz, L. 2024. Evil Spirits and Rocket Debris: In Search of Lost Souls in Siberia. Oxford: Berghahn Press.

Gieser, T. 2022. Leben mit Wölfen: Affekte, Gefühle und Stimmungen in Mensch-Wolf-Beziehungen. Verlag, Bielefeld: Transcript.

 

Edited volumes and special issues

Lammer, C. & Thiemann, A. eds. 2024. Infrastructures of Value: New and Historical Materialities in Agriculture. A Special Issue in Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology (89(2).

Broz, L., Keck, F., Weich, K. L. eds. 2023. Veterinary Anthropology: Samples from an Emerging Field. Research topic of Frontiers in Veterinary Science https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/18283/veterinary-anthropology-samples-from-an-emerging-field

Laine, N., Keil, P.G., Rahmat, K. eds. 2023. Composing Worlds with Elephants. Paris: Institut de recherche pour le développement.

O’Mahony, K., Walker, K. & Boyer, K. 2023. Recollecting the Everyday: Emotion, Memory and Spaces of Mundane Practice. A Special Issue in Emotion, Space and Society 48. 

Alexander, C. & Sosna, D. eds. 2022. Thrift and Its Paradoxes: From Domestic to Political Economy (Vol. 10). Berghahn Books.

Scientific Articles and Chapters

Thiemann, A. 2024. Fledgling Farms and Failing Health: How the Polypore State Transforms the Multispecies Relations in Serbia’s Raspberry Fields. Journal of Labor & Society 27 (3), 344–369.

Thiemann, A. 2024. Infrastructuring ‘Red Gold’: Agronomists, Cold Chains, and the Involution of Serbia’s Raspberry Country. Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology 89 (2): 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2022.2163271.

Lammer, C. & Thiemann, A. 2024. Introduction: Infrastructuring Value. Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology 89 (2): 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2023.2180063.

Arregui, A.G., 2023. Reversible pigs: An infraspecies ethnography of wild boars in Barcelona. American Ethnologist50(1):115-128. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.13114

Bongi, P., Baruffetti, M., Gazzola, A., & O’Mahony, K. 2023. Coexistence in ecological corridors: understanding tolerance of wolves in the Northwestern Apennines, Italy. Human Dimensions of Wildlife28 (1): 53-69. https://doi.org/10.1080/10871209.2021.2010288

Broz, L., Keck, F., Weich, K. L. 2023. Veterinary anthropology: Samples from an emerging field. Frontiers in Veterinary Science 10:1053256. https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2023.1053256

Fair, H., Schreer, V., Keil, P., Kiik, L. & Rust, N., 2023. Dodo dilemmas: Conflicting ethical loyalties in conservation social science research. Area55(2): 245-253. https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12839

Keil, P.G. 2023. Introduction. In Laine, N., Keil, P. & Rahmat, K. (eds.) Composing Worlds with Elephants: Interdisciplinary dialogues (13-27). Paris: Institut de recherche pour le développement.

Nayar, S. & Keil, P.G. 2023. "Lantana Elephants." In Laine, N., Keil, P. & Rahmat, K. (eds.) Composing Worlds with Elephants: Interdisciplinary dialogues (101-109). Paris: Institut de recherche pour le développement.

Keil, P.G. 2023. Musth as a biosocial event: how musth disrupts the relational dynamics of a human-elephant community in Assam. In Laine, N., Keil, P. & Rahmat, K. (eds.) Composing Worlds with Elephants: Interdisciplinary dialogues (233-252). Paris: Institut de recherche pour le développement.

Keil, P.G. 2023. Unmaking the Feral: The shifting relationship between free-roaming pigs and settler Australians. Environmental Humanities 15 (2): 19-38 https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-10422267

Mašek, P. 2023. ‘It's Only Us, Hyenas, Who Profit Out of It’: Wrecked Cars, Leaked Humans, and the Death of the Person-car. Journal of Material Culture 28(1): 24-39. https://doi.org/10.1177/13591835211055709

Mathijs, E., Baird, J., Blomhoff, R., Büttner, A., Daugbjerg, C., Galli, F., Gwozdz, W., Janssen, M., Jehlička, P., Mattauch, L., Roosen, J., Röös, E., Schneider, T., Trichopoulou, A., Truninger, M., van Doorn, J. & Vandevijvere, S. 2023. Towards sustainable food consumption. Science Advice for Policy by European Academies (SAPEA) Report. SAPEA, Berlin (https://sapea.info/topic/food-consumption/).

Sosna, D. 2023.  The Inner Dynamics of Moral Economies: The Case of Waste Management, East European Politics and Societies 0(0): 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1177/08883254231173426

Sosna, D. 2023. Magnetism of strangeness: Silenced histories of landscapes. History and Anthropology 34(3): 390-408. https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2021.1946046

Sosna. D. 2023. Mortuary Archaeology Networks. In M. Peeples, J. Munson, B. Mills, T. Brughmans (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Archaeological Network Research (117-131). Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198854265.013.25

Sosna, D., Stehlíková, B., Mašek, P. (2023) Ecologies of quantification in waste management: Landfilling, e-waste recycling, and car breaking. Critique of Anthropology 0(0): 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308275X231205961

Szczygielska, M., Kowalewska, A. 2023. Tracing Viral Trajectories. Epistemic and Bodily Reservoirs in Interspecies Health. History and Technologyhttps://doi.org/10.1080/07341512.2023.2251211

Szczygielska, M., Kowalewska, A. 2023. Naïve Boars and Dummy Sows: Porcine Sex and the Politics of Purity. In Aavik, K., Irni, K.,  Joki, M. (eds.) Feminist Animal and Multispecies Studies: Critical Perspectives on Food and Eating. Brill Press, 45-69. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004679375_003 

Szczygielska, M. 2023. Reading Teeth: Ivory as an Artifact of Classed Whiteness. Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, 53 (3): 308-331. https://doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2023.53.3.308 

von Essen, E., O'Mahony, K., Szczygielska, M., Gieser, T., Vaté, V., Arregui, A., & Broz, L. 2023. The Many Boar Identities: Understanding Difference and Change in the Geographies of European Wild Boar Management.  Journal of Environmental Planning and Management https://doi:10.1080/09640568.2023.2269312

Walker, A., O'Mahony, K., & Boyer, K. 2023. Recollecting the everyday: Emotion, memory and spaces of mundane practice. Emotion, Space and Society, 48: 100961. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2023.100961

Alexander, C. & Sosna, D. 2022. Introduction: Thrift, Anti-thrift, Scale and Paradox. In C. Alexander and D. Sosna (eds.) Thrift and its Paradoxes: From Domestic to Political Economy. Berghahn: 1-30.

Enticott G., O'Mahony, K., Shortall, O. & Sutherland, L. 2022. ‘Natural born carers’? Reconstituting gender identity in the labour of calf care. Journal of Rural Studies, 95: 362-372.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2022.09.034

Keil P.G. & Laine, N. 2022. Human-elephant worlds. In J. Wouters & T. Subba (eds.) Routledge Companion to Northeast India. New Delhi: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003285540

Harris, C.B., Sutton, J., Keil, P.G., McIlwain, N., Harris, S.A., Barnier, A.J., Savage, G. & Dixon, R.A. 2022. Ageing together: Interdependence in the memory compensation strategies of long-married older couples. Frontiers in Psychology13: 854051. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.854051

Mašek, P. 2022. Grey greening: quiet sustainability at auto salvage yards. Geografie, 127(1): 55-73. https://doi.org/10.37040/geografie2022127010055

O'Mahony, K. 2022. Inhabiting Forest of Dean borderlands: wild boar and dynamic ecologies of memory and place. Emotion, Space and Society, 45: 100902. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2022.100902

Sosna, D. 2022. Saving and Wasting: The Paradox of Thrift in a Czech Landfill. In C. Alexander and D. Sosna (eds.)Thrift and its Paradoxes: From Domestic to Political Economy. Berghahn: 162-184.

Thiemann, A. & Rolle K. 2022. Becoming In-visible: Family Farms in Rural Latvia in the Framework of the EU Common Agricultural Policy. Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment 44 (1): 41–52. https://doi.org/10.1111/cuag.12286

 

News:

25. 10. 2024
Seminar with Markéta Zandlová on Thursday, November 14
14. 10. 2024
Position Announcement, deadline 15 November 2024
16. 08. 2024
Seminar with Darmanto on Tuesday, September 17
07. 06. 2024
Research on Environmental Sustainability and on the Use of Resources in Central European Households