Main Content

Research Profile

The Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Philipps-Universität Marburg studies socio-cultural transformation processes with special emphasis on approaches of environmental anthropology and conflict anthropology. In addition, the focus is on critical colonialism and museum studies and Amerindian and Afro-American studies. Regionally, research focuses primarily on Latin America, particularly the Amazon, the Caribbean, and North America, but also on the Caucasus and Eastern Europe.

Our research topics and current research projects:

Critical colonialism and museum studies:

Provenances of ethnographic objects from colonial contexts in Central Hesse.
Colonial expansion and scientific-museum reduction. University science, its collections and colonial entanglements.

Graphic communication systems:

More than writing: encoding and decoding in and from Amerindian graphic communication systems between Mexico and the Andes.

Research on the Colombian Peace Process:

Competing (in)certainties.

Social climate change impacts:

Social climate change impacts and sustainability innovation in Southern Africa and Northern South America.
Climate Change in Sub-Saharan Africa. Social and cultural perceptions, agricultural impacts, and social transformation.

Indigenous groups of Latin America:

Pueblos Indígenas, Medios de Comunicación y Significados del Conflicto en Amèrica Latina: Un Estudio de Antropología.