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Fieldwork as witnessing. Anthropological knowledge-making between openness, blind spots, and personal involvement
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Marion Näser-Lather
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Fieldwork as witnessing. Anthropological knowledge-making between openness, blind spots, and personal involvement
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                                          2023 | Anuac. Vol. 12, n° 1, Giugno 2023: 109-124




Fieldwork as witnessing
Anthropological knowledge-making between openness, blind spots,
and personal involvement1


Alexander Koensler
Università di Perugia


Marion Näser-Lather
University of Innsbruck


Abstract: This essay discusses poses of identities available for anthropologists in rela-
tion to increasingly salient issues of contemporary anthropological knowledge-making.
Starting with a critical evaluation of the idea of the anthropologist as a witness by George
Marcus (2005), we outline cornerstones in current debates on the positionality of the
researcher, such as the implications of the end of meta-narratives, the call for epistemo-
logical openness, the crisis of representation, the delimitation of fields and the discus-
sion on human rights. In a second step, we highlight how, at first glance, the concept of
witnessing seems to provide a solution for these dilemmas. Yet, witnessing entails blind
spots and other limits which are often overlooked. These concern relationality, memory,
involvement, understanding, and the question of how to intervene in the scenarios we
observe. In sum, the essay redefines the conditions of anthropological knowledge pro-
duction in an age of witnessing.

Keywords: Ethnography; Witnessing; Testimony; Blind spots; Knowledge-making



1. This essay is based on the introductory presentation of the 3rd Political Imagination Lab-
   oratory, an international conference organized by the authors and held at University of
   Perugia, 6-7 December 2019 with the title What [Not] Can be Said: Fieldwork as Witnessing?
   (www.peasantproject.org). We thank the participants for their feedback and contributions,
   as well as the team from Anuac and the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive
   dedication and attention.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Alexander Koensler, Marion Näser-Lather
Fieldwork as witnessing. Anthropological knowledge-making between openness, blind spots,
and personal involvement
2023 | Anuac. Vol. 12, n° 1, Giugno 2023: 109-124.
ISSN: 2239-625X – DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-5364
110	Alexander Koensler, Marion Näser-Lather

Introduction
   Anthropologists see their field increasingly populated by a number of fig-
ures similar to them who all record, document and claim to represent local
situations, like journalists, experts, NGO officials, and activists. As a conse-
quence, what distinguishes the work of the anthropologist from these other
actors becomes less clear. In this essay, we reflect on the different poses of
identities that are available for anthropologists, especially in light of an over-
crowded field of people who represent realities. We ask: What distinguishes the
anthropologist from other similar figures, like experts, journalists or activists?
What identity poses are available? Which are more or less desirable? In par-
ticular, as the idea of witness seems to become an increasingly visible answer
to these dilemmas, we ask: What are the blind spots of witnessing? What does
this mean for the possibilities of engagement? The different range of answers
given by anthropologists themselves reflects the often-tumultuous paradigm
changes in anthropology. From the production of grand structuralist pictures
over Marxist critical consciousness and literary interpretative approaches to
self-reflexive auto-ethnography and the ontological turn – anthropological
interpretative paradigms have offered a huge variety of epistemological and
ethical approaches. In what follows, we will offer different inputs from a range
of interdisciplinary debates in dialogue with one another.

Epistemological openness and the construction of ethnographic authority
  Across all paradigms, one key element that characterizes contemporary
anthropological knowledge-making is the longing for a fundamentally epis-
temological “openness”2 towards unknown horizons. This openness is the
most powerful conceptual tool of anthropology to destabilize our certainties,
our knowledge of the world (Fischer 2018; Mattingly 2019). “Go and uncover
something”, Erving Goffman used to say to his students (Atkinson 2017). The
popularity of this perspective among ethnographers manifests itself, among
other things, in the frequent application of Grounded Theory Methodology
with its explorative, inductive approach (e.g., see Strauss, Corbin 1996).
  However, even if this longing for a heuristic openness remains a key stone in
contemporary anthropological knowledge production, it may entail sometimes


2. This openness is firmly anchored in the tradition of anthropology, e.g. the interpretative
   turn (following Geertz), feminist and marxist interventions of the 1970s and the debate
   on representation during the 1980s (Clifford, Marcus 1986). For more recent discussions
   on epistemology see Toren, de Pina-Cabral 2011.


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Fieldwork as witnessing                                                       111

contradictory approaches to legitimate authority for undertaking research. In
The Anthropologist as Witness in Contemporary Regimes of Intervention, George
Marcus (2005) investigates such ways to legitimate the authority for under-
taking research. These are questions that concern not only the identity of the
anthropologist, but also the ways how anthropology understands its practices
of knowledge-making. George Marcus asks: “What identity does the anthro-
pologist create? What is the self-claimed rhetoric of authority for research
undertaken in such situations?” (Marcus 2005: 31). Aware of debates on the
constructive character of identification (Brubaker 2004), Marcus does not pre-
sume that the anthropologist “has” an identity, but creates one.

Changing landscapes of anthropological knowledge-making
   Importantly, the search for authority in anthropological knowledge-making
is shaped by the decline of trust in universally valid contextual frameworks.
First, there is the relative decline of available meta-narratives which gave the
impression that there were “outside vantage points, intellectual, scholastic
platforms, from which to render critical assessments” (Marcus 2005: 33). Now-
adays these certainties have vanished for most of us, as they have vanished in
social sciences in general since the advent of the postmodern condition (Ly-
otard 1991). In anthropology, one starting point of this tendency began with
Franz Boas’ rejection of evolutionism. In sociology, it was probably the Frank-
furt School’s referral to the self-destruction of enlightenment (Horkheimer
and Adorno 2002). For some time, Marxist or development theories allowed
anthropologists and other social scientists to root their knowledge production
more or less firmly within broader conceptual frameworks, able to confer a
modernist certainty to their accounts.
   Secondly, the poses of objective certainties of anthropological knowledge
production have been questioned first and foremost by feminist and post-co-
lonial epistemologies, de-centering the white, male scholar perspective which
has posed for centuries as universal and “normal”, its hegemony masking its
partiality (e.g. Lewin 2009; Moore 2013). George Marcus’ own involvement in
the “writing culture”-debate was crucial in the “crisis of representation” of
classical anthropological knowledge production tightly interconnected to this
dynamic (Clifford and Marcus 1986), that echoes indirectly the issues taken up
by feminist anthropologists.
   In short, nowadays, multiple tentative lines along which we can try to make
sense of our work have replaced universal frameworks. An enlightening exam-



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112	Alexander Koensler, Marion Näser-Lather

ple are human rights. A classical perspective has considered their normative
implications at face value. However, more recently a different approach opened
up a sounder understanding of socio-cultural processes around human rights
(cf. Eckert et al. 2012; Koensler 2015). Most notably, Richard A. Wilson (2006)
proposes to study the “social life” of human rights and to understand its per-
formative dimension. Mark Goodale (2009) argues that “human rights” have
developed into one of the rare new available contemporary meta-narratives.
Goodale shows that the human rights framework can be interpreted in con-
sensus with the neoliberal paradigm of communities in a competition over
claims, transforming human rights into “neoliberal rights”.

The expert, the journalist and the witness
   These changing landscapes of anthropological knowledge-making have
implications on how the identity of the anthropologist can be conceived. Mar-
cus (2005) surveys three different alternatives: the expert, the reporter and
the witness. Each of these identity poses entails different epistemological
assumptions with regard to knowledge-making. From a contemporary an-
thropological perspective, both the expert and the reporter find themselves
in rather unsatisfactory subject positions. In many settings, the stance of the
classical expert ascribing unquestionable interpretive power to him_herself
has become out of fashion for anthropologists, with the ethos of self-restraint
resulting from feminist and postcolonial questions of authority and owner-
ship. The roles of experts have diversified. However, although the expert might
be disinterest, he/she tends to be less independent than scholars working for
academic institutions who, despite being involved in social, economic and
university power relations, may feel the self-demand and the duty towards the
scientific community to strive for independence. Moreover, the trust in objec-
tive knowledge which this position implies and its positionality towards the
subjects of research have been problematized (Marchand 2010). Then again,
positionings as witness and expert are sometimes entangled, when anthropol-
ogists are perceived as both at the same time, resulting in conflicting behavior
expectations and conventions regarding knowledge production. Modesty,
caution and awareness of positionality and situatedness stand opposite the
need to demonstrate expertise and authority and to make clear statements
(Kurtovic 2018).
   The journalist might be the most easily available identity pose for an-
thropologists. It entails a certain independency and offers to create engaged



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Fieldwork as witnessing                                                        113

accounts. However, journalistic accounts leave little maneuver to problema-
tize representation. Firstly, methods, theoretical foundation for the evaluation
of empiric material, and time available for research enable scientists to do a
much more in-depth analysis. Secondly, in most cases academic research is
uncommitted whereas the work of (online-) journalists is increasingly geared
to readership figures and click rates. The identity of the activist could be added
to Marcus’s alternatives, but this role either does not allow much representa-
tive independence. In short, most of the identity poses seem to remain stuck
in one way or another in the issues that came to light with the changing con-
text of anthropological knowledge production outlined above.
   According to Marcus (2005), the figure of the witness constitutes an in-
creasing point of reference for ethnographers. The witness allows to closely
observe circumstances of everyday life with a self-awareness of the limits of
representation. Importantly, the witness preserves his/her individuality and
allows to problematize political interests in the research endeavor. S/he can
have an independent and distinct voice. Didier Fassin (2006: 353) reminds us
about the distinction in Latin between testis and superstes: The term testis
refers to someone who observes from the outside a conflictual event and can
contribute to conflict resolution as s/he observed “objectively” what happened.
By contrast, superstes is the person who survived the events at stake and con-
tributes with his/her subjective account to commemorate or sensibilize for the
accordant issues. The testis needs to be objective, while the superstes can be
subjective. S/he “tells the world what s/he has seen and experienced” whereas
the testis has a second-hand testimony which may be more detached and more
neutral, but which relies on the subjective perspective of the superstes (Fassin
2008, cited in Guilhot 92). Ethnographers may find themselves in both roles. Of
course, these are only tentative heuristic remarks that reflect on the strength
and limit of each identity pose, but there are many examples of investigative
journalism that resonates more with ethnography rather than journalism.
   In contemporary ethnographic field experiences, political and ethical
themes, e.g., inequality, devastation, or rights struggles, have gained a revived
importance. The witness seems to offer a valid solution to these challenges.
Moreover, the idea of an ethically responsible, political engaged research has
been received growing interest. For instance, some intellectual strands in It-
aly shaped by both Gramscian thought and critical theory have established
long-standing research partly overlapping with Marcus’ concept of testimony




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114	Alexander Koensler, Marion Näser-Lather

(Papa 2020; Boni, Koensler, Rossi 2020)3. Yet, there are some significant limits
in the identity pose of the witness as well.

Blind spots
   Not everything can be seen by the witness. Our perception, our bodily expe-
riences and our interpretation of a given situation may differ from those of our
interlocutors respectively the actors involved (Bonz 2016) – not only related
to biological differences (such as short-sightedness) but also to specific modes
of perceptions and (emotional) experiences4. For instance, an ethnographer
who seldom works bodily will experience ploughing by hand in a different way
than the peasant on whose farm he conducts participant observation (Devere-
ux 1987: 459, in Bonz 2016: 21). What seems sensorily ‘normal’ to us is not
normal for our interlocutors and vice versa. In addition, animals have differ-
ent ways of perceiving space and time than humans (cf. Moses 2006) – which
we should take into account in the realm of multispecies studies. Moreover,
perception is always an interplay of bottom up – sensory stimuli reaching our
brain – and top down – their processing dependent on socialization (e.g., see
Goldstein 2011: 52).
   Take for example the ability to recognise objects: without knowing what a
table is – through growing up in a culture which uses tables – we would not
recognize it and only see geometrical forms. Following Kelly Oliver (2001),
one can ask how we can witness that which we do not recognise? The ability
of recognition is dependant one´s perspective and situatedness which is often
the dominant white, western one. Franz Fanon (1986 (1952)) has stressed the
connection between recognition and concepts of “the human” vs. (racialized)
“others”. Enabling „others“ to witness would require a change in these con-
ceptualisations (Awan, Musmar 2000: 146). Thus, perception can be influenced
by social dynamics, one´s own attitudes, the relationships between research-
er and field partners and the choice of methods and theoretical approaches.
These differences in perception create blind spots regarding witnessing5. In
what follows, we will examine the different aspects of those blind spots.


3. An overview of research that is influenced by the pose of witnessing can be found in
   Marcus (2005) and, slightly more updated, in Fischer (2018). Though interesting, it goes
   beyond the scope of this essay to discuss this literature in detail.
4. This regards all senses whose education is formed as a function of socialisation and indi-
   vidual momentary interests (Vanini, Vaskul, Gottschalk 2012).
5. For a more recent inquiry into the anthropological foundations of the senses see Classen
   2010.


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Fieldwork as witnessing                                                                115

Relationality
   Witnessing is not merely an individual act. As witnesses, we are, as for ex-
ample actor network theory shows, always part of relationships of human
and nonhuman beings, and cannot remove ourselves from the consequences
– us being influenced by them (Latour 2005). Along this line, Donna Haraway
(1997: 23-24) criticizes what she calls the “modest witness” – the natural-
ization of the white male gaze which has been set by patriarchy as default,
universal, neutral, and thereby alleged objective perspective, obfuscating its
being partial and positioned. Haraway points out:
     This is the culture within which contingent facts – the real case about the
     world – can be established with all the authority, but none of the considerable
     problems, of transcendental truth. This self-invisibility [of the witness] is
     the specifically modern, European, masculine, scientific form of the virtue
     of modesty. This is the form of modesty that pays off its practitioners in the
     coin of epistemological and social power.

    Her point invites us to interrogate biographically, culturally and histori-
cally determined views, their construction through social interaction and
accordant discourses on perception. They make it possible to produce repre-
sentations of the “objective” world out there and actively contribute to render
the witness’s gaze invisible.
    In addition, the position of the witness is always embedded in power rela-
tions (cf. Awan, Musmar 2000: 164). Who can be considered a witness, and who
is accepted as a reliable witness – who can, citing Spivak (1988), speak? Clear-
ly, women, POC, queers, poor and disabled persons might not be ascribed the
same authority of witnessing as privileged, white, western males. Alessandra
Gribaldo (2021: 68, 73) shows how female victims before courts are not always
being taken seriously. Moreover, the chances people have to witness events
depends on privileges and field access – to who is admitted to a fieldsite. Of
course, hybrid or contradictory roles may result from intersectional position-
ing and multi-layered involvement in the field – as Braidotti has pointed out,
subjectivity is non-unitary and occupies multiple positions (cited in Awan,
Musmar 2020: 167).
    Blind spots can also occur due to our relations to our publics. Angel-Aja-
ni (2004: 134) emphasises that in our publications, we tend to smooth over
aversive sensations because of their being difficult to digest or because of
non-written academic rules such as not wanting to appear “too sentimen-
tal”. In addition, the target audiences of our publications influence form and
content of our testimonies, be it lawyers and legal systems, communities


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116	Alexander Koensler, Marion Näser-Lather

seeking recognition of their rights, or our discipline. Angel-Ajani argues that
the conditions of our witnessing might contradict the ethical (self-)image of
the anthropologist as noble (activist) to whom the act of witnessing confers a
moral authority (for this position see Scheper-Hughes 1992: xxi). Constraints
related to field access and power relations as well as attempt of actors within
the field to use the anthropologist for their own agendas can play a role here.
Thus, witnessing is never a moral absolute, as Guilhot states (2012: 89-90).

Memory
   Another important aspect of witnessing is memory. Memory modifies and
alters the process of witnessing with passing time. Marcus points out that
“the witness in Western law is a truthful observer” (Marcus 2005: 37) – yet we
all know how unreliable the perception of witnesses really is (Albright 2017)
which is why we have to free the anthropological idea of the witness from the
notion of inherent authority and/or objectivity. Which details of an event and
its participating actors are remembered, and how, is influenced by its emo-
tional saliency and, again, by a focus configured through socialization and
current perspective (Markowitsch 2005). Moreover, often our witnessing as
well as our memory thereof is clouded by a distinctive position for or against
field partners, of action anthropology vs. researching against.

Bodily involvement
   The witness also needs to take into account the limitations of his/her body.
Phenomenologists like Schmitz (2007: 30-32, 37) highlight that, while expe-
riencing a situation, our senses are affected immediately, bodily noticeable,
by atmospheres and strong impressions like, for instance, sensations which
evoke the feeling of danger. The supposedly detached view implied in the
notion of witnessing therefore needs to be questioned for two reasons: First-
ly, sensory experiences are always interwoven with emotions, meanings and
memories (Hsu 2008: 440). Based on feminist thought which highlights the
role of the body, Awan and Musmar (2020: 165) point to the circulation of
emotions engendering affective witnessing. Feelings are shaped by our bi-
ographical socialization, and emotions are culturally formed and therefore,
affective witnessing also can be but a mediated, distorted account. Secondly, if
we witness an event in which we are directly involved, and if that event evokes
strong emotions, e.g., sadness, anxiety, panic, or rage, bodily mechanisms take
place which highly influence our perception. When confronted with a stressful



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Fieldwork as witnessing                                                         117

situation, adrenalin und noradrenalin have a stimulating effect on the sympa-
thetic nervous system and the ability to process information is suppressed or
blocked. Also, tunnel vision may occur, reducing the field of vision and hiding
environmental details outside that focus from view (Litzcke, Schuh, Plet-
ke 2013: 18-20). These and other phenomena may lead to difficulties for the
ethnographer as a witness in perceiving and interpreting situations. Fassin
asks, “how much of the intelligibility of the conflict is obscured at the moment
when one speaks of the trauma and the victim? […] what is lost in this trans-
lation […] is, precisely, history’’ (cited in Guilhot 2014: 91).
   The attempt to stage oneself as a modest witness – thereby conferring
oneself the authority of “objectivity” – remains related to the burdens of the
positivist past in social sciences: the expectation of objectivity still is implicit-
ly brought to scholars, especially against the background of the fight for power
of interpretation and funds, a pressure felt even more by the humanities and
the social sciences, who are often devaluated by the non-scientific public as
well as by politicians for not producing “exact” knowledge like the natural
sciences. The still-present longing for objectivity manifests itself in recent
interdisciplinarian discussions on scientific knowledge production and con-
structivism (Boghossian 2006, Žižek 2018). Haraway (1988) and the debate on
the crisis of representation highlight that we are always necessarily situated
in the field: knowledge is always partial and locatable. However, that does not
mean that we may not reach out for objective knowledge (cf. Bourdieu 2012).
The question is how to deal with this positionality while adopting the stance
of the witness – an acknowledgement and consideration of the several blinds
spots and imperfections of witnessing could be the beginning.

Understanding
   According to Marcus, the figure of the witness allows the “return to a po-
sition of a kind of disinterestedness” in order to develop a critique from the
inside (Marcus 2005: 32). Witnessing enables a process of translation, re-
flexion and abstraction. Thus, the position of the witness could be a solution
to the emotional dilemmas deriving from the negotiation of distance and
closeness. This becomes especially important in situations when we strongly
oppose ethical and/or political attitudes of our interlocutors – i.e. when we are
confronted with, as Bangstad (2017) puts it, “people we don’t necessarily like”,
such as may be the case with neo-nazis (see Shoshan 2016) or violent forms
of masculinity (see Ellis 2017). Of course, the same dilemmas arise when we



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118	Alexander Koensler, Marion Näser-Lather

carry out research with people we like “too much”. Positions of closeness to or
membership in the researched group bear, as we well know, the risk of counter
transfer and/or over-identification (e.g., Mannitz 2009: 15).
   There has been an intense debate on how to react to such risks. For instance,
a sharper distinction between empathy and sympathy has been proposed
(Bubandt & Willerslev 2015), as well as avoiding methods like interviews and
participant observation altogether in order to distance oneself (Esseveld, Ey-
erman 1992) or simply arguing that distancing is not necessary and that on
the contrary, “going native” is desirable (Hegner 2019: 30-33). The figure of
the witness can enable to preserve independence and detachment (within the
margins pointed out above) and can confer “authority and purpose” (Marcus
2005: 36) to the presence and the work of anthropologists. Yet, can this dynam-
ic also lead to erect to what has been described an “empathy wall”? According
to Arlie Hochschild (2016: 5), such a wall would prevent fieldworkers from
engaging seriously with the life-worlds and worldviews of people whose moral
standpoints we don’t share and therefore, creating even more blind spots.6

Intervening: How? When? Why?
   Witnessing can, as Marcus states, counter pressure to act in “regimes of
intervention”. Therefore, the position of witness seems to exclude action-an-
thropology or engaged anthropology – where researchers intend to empower
their field partners in order to support a certain cause.
   In some cases, intervening could be a duty instead of a liability. Moreover,
a positioning not only for, but sometimes also against the people we research
seems sometimes necessary – or doesn’t it? This depends on the question
whether we adopt a cultural relativism as demanded by Benjamin Teitelbaum
(2019), who takes the stance of unconditional support for his field partners
regardless of their morals. In other cases, anthropologists as Aihwa Ong
(1995) and Nancy Scheper-Hughes (1995), propose a new form of universal-
ism leading to a politically committed and morally engaged anthropology. In
particular, Scheper-Hughes (1995: 419) combines witnessing with the obliga-
tion to “’take sides’ and make judgements”. Aihwa Ong (1995: 430), instead,
has stated that the task of anthropology is to “developing a mobile sensitivity
to cultural difference that nevertheless insists on defending minimal modern
human rights”. But in the end, the question remains: In how far do we have an


6. For discussions on empathy within anthropology see Hollan and Throop (2011).


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Fieldwork as witnessing                                                       119

obligation to our interlocutors and other actors in as well as outside the field
which implies not only witnessing, but also acting?
   At least, witnessing seems to entail the responsibility of the anthropologist
to remain true to victims (Hatley 2000: 2-3, cited in Angel-Ajani 2004: 138).
According to Liisa Malkki, witnessing also implies responsibility in the form of
“a caring form of vigilance” (1997: 94, cited in Angel-Ajani 2004: 137). As An-
gel-Ajani (2004: 134) states, using as an example her research on imprisoned
migrant women, witnessing might also mean the omittance of certain aspects.
This might conflict with expectations that are placed on the anthropologist
expert-witness whose ascribed role is “recovering the truth” and thus, whose
account shall be as accurate and as complete as possible.

Conclusion
   Marcus’ figure of the anthropologist as a witness productively circum-
vents aporia resulting from the end of the meta-narratives of anthropological
knowledge-making – and yet, presents us with new shoals and pitfalls, as we
have shown. Anthropological knowledge-making remains precarious and
fragmented. In this essay we have asked what distinguishes the anthropol-
ogist from similar figures such as experts and journalists who all record and
represent specific situations. We have stressed the importance of consider-
ing knowledge as necessary fragmented and politically embedded rather than
objective and neutral. It is anthropology that has an extensive tradition of re-
flexivity in which the figure of the witness seems to allow to combine a certain
self-reflexive awareness with a more universal ambition of knowledge-making
and ethical stance. Yet, the figure of the witness implies as well some lim-
its which are often overlooked: the blind spots of testimony as they emerge
through its fragmented memory, its bodily involvement and its limits of un-
derstanding. In sum, the-anthropologist-as-witness can reflect on these blind
spots as conditions of the possibility of anthropological work, while clinging
to the ideals of knowledge and striving for honesty regarding its production.
What might render the anthropologists way of witnessing valuable is the “pro-
ductive hesitation” of ethnographic practice mentioned by Strathern (2004)
which, as Gribaldo argues, “allows for taking a stance” (Gribaldo 2021: 130).
Understanding these dimensions of the more and more common pose of the
anthropologist-as-witness means to address a controversial topic in a partic-
ular epistemological moment of anthropological knowledge production.




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120	Alexander Koensler, Marion Näser-Lather

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124	Alexander Koensler, Marion Näser-Lather

 Alexander Koensler (PhD University of Siena 2009) is Associate Professor at Univer-
 sity of Perugia since 2019, where he coordinates the MA program in Social Anthro-
 pology and Sociology. Before joining University of Perugia, he served in different
 faculty positions at Queen’s University Belfast (UK/Northern Ireland), University of
 Münster (Germany) and the Institutes for Desert Research at Ben-Gurion Univer-
 sity of the Negev (Israel). Among his recent books, Etnografie militanti. Prospettive
 e dilemmi (2020 – with Stefano Boni and Amalia Rossi), Antropologia dell’alimen-
 tazione. Produzione, consumo e movimenti sociali (2019 – with Pietro Meloni) and
 Israeli-Palestinian Activism: Shifting Paradigms (2015).
 alexander.koensler@unipg.it

 Marion Näser-Lather (PhD University of Marburg 2010, habilitation 2019) is Assis-
 tant Professor at the Institute of History and European Ethnology at the University
 of Innsbruck. She has held post-doctoral positions at the Universities of Paderborn,
 Innsbruck and Marburg and was a visiting scientist at the University of Perugia
 and the Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg. Among her recent books, Vampire.
 Zwischen Blutdurst und Triebverzicht (2020 – with Marguerite Rumpf), Ein Land für
 Frauen. Ethnographie der italienischen Frauenbewegung Se Non Ora Quando? (2019),
 Backlash?! Antifeminismus in Wissenschaft, Politik und Gesellschaft (2019 – with
 Anna Lena Oldemeier and Dorothee Beck).
 marion.naeser-lather@uibk.ac.at




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