easa

Sarah Green (University of Helsinki), President
I am an anthropologist of location and borders within the European region. I have been on the EASA Executive for two years as co-editor of Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale. I believe that the role of scholarly societies is becoming more important in today’s academic and political climate. Issues of open access, academic precarity, auditing regimes, attacks on academic freedom, and endless changes in university structures are affecting anthropology and how it is practised. EASA gives an independent voice to anthropologists linked to European universities on these issues, and provides a forum for listening to the wide diversity of its membership. Moreover, my past roles in academic auditing and administration, and my research focusing on the politics of borders and location, have convinced me that the voice of anthropologists beyond the academy is also increasingly needed. More than ever, I value the role of independent scholarly societies such as EASA in providing this.

Georgeta Stoica (Centre Universitaire de Formation et de Recherche de Mayotte/Laboratoire ICARE, Université de la Réunion (France)), Vice-President
Presently an Associate Professor of Anthropology in Mayotte - an ultra-peripheral region of Europe - I do know what it means to live and work on short-term research and teaching contracts. Between 2016-2018 while still a precarious researcher I served on the EASA Executive Board as a precarity and lobby liaison. I struggled to make our community aware of this delicate issue and to recognise its shared responsibility. If re-elected, I will carry on our campaign to deal with precarity. A priority will be to establish a task force to represent the membership of EASA at higher European institutional levels. You may also count on my personal commitment to make anthropology more visible. EASA members should be encouraged to contribute to public understanding in these turbulent and challenging times.

Mariya Ivancheva (University of Liverpool/PrecAnthro)
A true believer in the transformative power of research, I have been a committed member of EASA ever since my PhD studies. My research focuses on the marketization and digitalisation of university education, the casualization of labour, and the role of universities in addressing / reproducing intersectional inequalities. A co-founder of the Anthropology of Labour Network, I am involved in a number of activist initiatives, including PrecAntro. Through PrecAnthro we are committed to enable EASA to take an active stance on the growing precarity and inequality in the anthropological and academic profession at EU, national and institutional level. If elected, I would galvanize EASA’s work on what I see as urgent issues: 1) authorship, exploitation, and teaching-only contracts in big projects 2) recruitment practices of anthropological departments 3) decolonisation of the discipline. I would steer EASA to address new realignments and peripheralisations within the neoliberal EU, intra-European and global asymmetries. 

Cristiana Bastos (Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon)
Having participated in EASA since 1990 with papers, panels, and network conference hosting, I am now ready to serve on the Executive Committee. If elected, I commit to work on raising awareness and action against three threats affecting anthropologists in Europe and abroad: 1) Rise of authoritarian regimes that discredit science, critical thinking, anthropology and minority rights; 2) Destruction of our discipline by academic bureaucracies and precarization; 3) Tensions in access to the published results of our work. EASA, in alliance with other anthropological associations in the world, should intervene actively in the current debates and political choices regarding access to knowledge while also acknowledging its collaborative nature and the reconfigurations of authorship. PI, ERC AdG, The Colour of Labour (http://colour.ics.ulisboa.pt/). Research interests: biopower, health, colonialism, migration, plantation, race, history of science, world anthropologies. Publications: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5387-4770.

Miia Halme-Tuomisaari (University of Helsinki & Allegra Lab)
As a member of the EASA Executive board I would embrace opportunities to increase the public role of anthropology, among others by encouraging novel publication formats and social media engagement. I would also work toward increasing the importance of collaboration, collegial solidarity and creativity in career assessments and research funding. As a precarious academic and a mother, I have first-hand experience of the dire consequences of intensifying neoliberal mismanagement, increasingly entrenched hierarchies prioritizing non-academic interests, and the wide-spread rise of personal and professional anxieties characterizing our professional space. I am a legal anthropologist specialized in the analysis of the contemporary human rights phenomenon with thorough training in both anthropology and critical international law, currently working as a Core Fellow of the Helsinki Collegium of Advanced Studies. I am a board member of the Finnish Anthropological Society, an activist, a scholarly social media enthusiast and a generator of novel openings, including the co-founding of Allegra Lab in 2013.

Monica Heintz (University of Paris Nanterre), Secretary
Monica Heintz is Associate Professor (Maître de conférence) at the University of Paris Nanterre, and from January 2019 will be the co-director of the Laboratoire d’Ethnologie et de Sociologie Comparative in Nanterre. Her main research focuses on moralities and temporalities and her field sites are located in Eastern Europe and France. In recent years she has been extending her methodological research on morality to include naturalistic approaches. Also, in the frame of several joint projects, she is focusing on ethical questions around cultural representations in museums, performances or documentary films. She has authored the books “Be European, recycle yourself”: changing work ethic in Romania (LIT, 2006) and Etica muncii la romanii de azi (Curtea Veche, 2005), edited the volumes The Anthropology of Moralities (Berghahn, 2009) and Weak state, uncertain citizenship: Moldova (Peter Lang, 2008), and co-edited European Anthropologies (Berghahn, 2017), Transitions historiques (Ed de Boccard, 2016), Morale et cognition à l’épreuve du terrain (in press, Presses Universitaires de Paris Nanterre).

David Mills (University of Oxford), Treasurer
David Mills is an Associate Professor in the Department of Education at the University of Oxford and also Director of an ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) doctoral training partnership between Oxford, Open University and Brunel. His PhD in Anthropology at SOAS drew on fieldwork at both Makerere and a rural Ugandan secondary school, and sparked his ethnographic curiosity about the anthropology of education and the education of anthropologists. He is currently developing a new research project on the politics of doctoral education in Africa.

The new executive at their first meeting in Lisbon, February 2019. From left to right, Mariya Ivancheva, Cristiana Bastos, Monica Heintz, Georgeta Stoica, David Mills, Sarah Green, Miia Halme-Tuomisaari