Mitglieder CASCA

Curriculum vitae

Education
University of Münster WWU (1978-1980) : studies in sinology and ethnology
Université de Paris X, Université de Paris III INALCO (1980-1982, maîtrise en ethnologie)
Liaoning-University (Shenyang, PR China, 1982-1985): studies in folklore and folkliterature
Berlin Free University (1985-1990, PhD 1990, Habilitation 2001)

Working experience:
– head of the research project “Liaoning Material Culture” (VolkswagenStiftung, 1990-1994)
– head of the VolkswagenStiftung research group Anthropology of Chinese Everyday Technologies (2001-2004)
– head of the Study Group History and Philosophy of Chinese Science and Technology, 2004-2008
– vacancy professorship summer term 2008, Free University Berlin, Chair of Anthropology
– since August 2008: professor of anthropologyat the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology and Museum director of the Ethnographic museum at the University of Zurich
– within the University Priority Research Program Asia and Europe at the University of Zurich, Research Field II, Entangled Histories, supervising dissertation projects and organising workshops and academic talks in the field of anthropologc/history of knowledge and knowledge cultures.

Major fields of research and interest
• anthropology, anthropology of technology
• material culture and skill
current research topics:

• palmwine tappers in the tropics (exhibition, June 2014);
• tree climbing (exhibition project);
• material culture and skill of itinerant groups and communities, ex. Jenischen in Switzerland (exhibition project), hunter gatherer groups (workshop in preparation, September 2014);
• disability and technology (SNF research project 2014-2017; topics: the sheltered workshop as a non-synchronous phenomenon; concepts of misfortune and skill formation; disability, aging and embodiment of skills; sign language and material culture; questions of accessability for people with disabilities in ethnographic museums)
• peasant everyday agrostrategies and the phenomenon of de-skilling
• everyday material culture and risk management
• the representation of skill in visual legacies (photograph, film)
• material culture and the body, body technologies,
• ex. squatting vs. sitting (exhibition project Chinese pottery, 2010);
• hand techniques of eating (chopsticks; finger food; modern packing and eating)
• the bodily orientation at meals
• material culture and the third generation: technologies for the aging

• everyday technologies and technical strategies
• material culture and heritage protection
• immaterial culture and skill protection
• anthropology of food (culinary systems, streetfood, culinary material culture, indigenous concepts of cooking; exceptional culinary circumstances (ex. The Great Leap Forward and the organisation of communal kitchens); food and aging; food and migration: Hummus as technique and taste; everyday innovation: from hand-made to machine-done and the transformation of taste production; ex.: the hand blender
• knowledge and knowledge transmission, everyday knowledge; oral transmission strategies; non-verbal and gestural knowledge transmission, apprenticeship, communication (exhibition project); food and aging
• anthropology/ethnology of China
• history of anthropology in Switzerland; field research of Swiss anthropologists (collection focus of the Ethnographic Museum at the University of Zurich
• history of science and technology, in its impact on everyday technologies; university ethnographic research collections and museums as places of anthropological knowledge and theory production.

Teaching fields
• introduction to anthropology
• methods of anthropology
• key concepts in anthropology
• Chinese anthropology
• Chinese culinary anthropology
• anthropology of technology/material culture
• anthropology of skilled practice
• ergology and technology, methods in material culture studies
• museum studies: the ethnographic museum
• oral narrative and transmission of knowledge; orality vs. literacy,
• anthropology of food: staple foods; honey; food under difficult conditions/anthropology of hunger and the question of skill; food and migration; food and mobility; drinking skills and drinking cultures
• anthropology and material culture of itinerant groups (autumn 2014)
• aging and material culture (2015)

Field research:
• field research in PR of China as well as in Taiwan, on material culture (house and dwelling, crafts, agriculture, culinary culture and culinary systems, night markets; modernisation of the household, ex. rice cooking and the rice cooker; the soybean milk cooker as a local and global phenomenon; childhood material culture as apprenticeship for life); 
• field research in Germany (Westfalia: Asylum seeker’s material culture, ex.: Cooking among Yezidi asylum seekers from Georgia in Germany; “When the street came: the memory of bituminization in local family histories”)
• field research in Switzerland: The Spezie Rara as a nostalgia program; The Ballenberg museum and course centre; Negociating taste and identity through hummus.

Fellowships and research grants
• Research Project Liaoning Peasant Material Culture (VW, 1990-1994) (head)
• Research Project Housing and Farmstead in Manchuria (DFG, 1995-1999) (habilitation research)
• Research Project Children’s Material Playing Culture (EU China Academic Network, 2000)
• Research Project History and Anthropology of Chinese Everyday Technologies (VW, 2002-2005) (head)
• invited scholar at the German Archaeological Institute Salar Research Project (2005, 2006)
• SNF research project Disability and Technology (2014-2017).