Prof. Dr. Catherine Whittaker
Tel: +49 (0)69/798-33070
Room: IG 554
Email: Whittaker (at) em.uni-frankfurt.de
Appointments: Tuesdays, 1pm – 3pm
Research and teaching interests
• Latin America (especially rural Central Mexico), U.S.-Mexico border region (particularly urban California), transnational
perspectives;
• Anthropology of structural violence: Diversity, power, activism, racism, gender, migration, subjectivation, vigilance;
• Feminist, Indigenous, and decolonial theories and methods, affect theory;
• Ethnographic writing
• Transnational perspectives
Short biography
I am an Assistant Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Goethe University Frankfurt (W1, tenure track), deputy head of department, and an equality representative of the faculty (Fachbereich 08). I am also on the editorial board of the journal Feminist Anthropology.
Previously, I was a research associate at the SFB 1369 "Cultures of Vigilance" at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and at the Centre for Citizenship, Civil Society and Rule of Law (CISRUL) at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. I have also been a visiting scholar at Brown University (Providence, RI, U.S.A.), the University of California San Diego and the National University of Mexico (UNAM) and completed my graduate studies at the University of Edinburgh, the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), the University of Oxford (all Anthropology, UK), and the University of Bonn (Latin American and Indigenous American Studies, Germany).
Previous ethnographic research projects on structures of violence
2022-2023: Rethinking masculine capital: militarization, care, and awkward affects (funded by the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung and the Johanna Quandt Young Academy).
2019: Gender roles in anti-violence activism in Michoacán, Mexico (ESRC-funded, project director: Dr. Trevor Stack, University of Aberdeen).
2014-2019: Indigenous women's power, the relationship between love and violence, and the politics of indigeneity in the rural south of Mexico City (funded by the University of Edinburgh, the Mexican government's Fellowship Program for Foreign Scholars, and the Royal Anthropological Institute).
