Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin. Credit: Paolo Risser.
Jonas Tinius is a cultural and social anthropologist, whose ethnographic research grapples with the tensions between art, migration, public institutions, and difficult heritage in Europe. He has conducted fieldwork in Germany, France, and Italy on institutionalised forms of cultural production (esp. theatres, museums, cultural centres, libraries, and art spaces), focusing on the reflexive agency of artistic and curatorial work. His research is multimodal and extends into public, instigative, and multimodal fieldwork formats, such as curation, publishing, or public programming.
He studied British and American Studies as well as Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Münster (Germany) before completing the Archaeology and Anthropology Tripos with a focus on Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge (2012). He continued to conduct doctoral fieldwork on a migrant-situated public theatre in the postindustrial Ruhr region and received his PhD (2016) for a study entitled State of the Arts. An Anthropology of German Theatre and Postmigrant Society (published with Cambridge University Press in August 2023). At King’s College and the Division of Social Anthropology, he was supervised by Prof James Laidlaw and received the William Wyse Scholarship. During his time in Cambridge, he was founding co-convenor of the Mellon-Newton-funded Cambridge Interdisciplinary Performance Network at the Centre for Research on the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (CRASSH), and a research fellow at the theatre studies collection on Schloss Wahn, Institute of Theatre and Media, University of Cologne (Germany).
From 2016-2020, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH) in the Department of European Ethnology at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, funded by Sharon Macdonald’s Alexander von Humboldt Professorship (2016-2020). As part of his research, he collaborated with artists and curators of art spaces and galleries in Berlin (among them SAVVY Contemporary, the ifa-gallery and the Berlin-Wedding district gallery) to study and think about curatorial practices as forms of troubling of national, universal, and hegemonic narratives, especially against the backdrop of major museum transformations such as the Humboldt Forum in the Berlin City Castle. From 2017-2020, he acted as founding convenor of the Anthropology and the Arts Network of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) together with Prof Roger Sansi (Barcelona). From 2017-2021, he has been founding coordinator with Dr Ruba Totah of the research section and co-founder of the PostHeimat Network on migrant theatre funded by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes and founding member of the theatre and research collective Ruhrorter.
In 2020, he took up a position as postdoctoral researcher and scientific coordinator of the ERC project Minor Universality. Narrative World Productions After Western Universality (PI: Prof Markus Messling) at Saarland University, as part of which he curated a residency, research, and exhibition programme in collaboration with the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin, entitledThe Pregnant Oyster - Doubts on Universalism (June-July 2022). The multilingual research project investigates forms of world-making narratives that emerge out of and after the critique of the violent articulations of Western Universality. The project goes beyond narratives that resort to relativistic or identitarian claims, and focuses instead on concrete, situated narratives of humanity, world, justice, freedom that articulate themselves in "minor" forms of literature, architecture, curating, publishing and so on. The project publishes the open-access book series Beyond Universalism / Partager l'universel and entertains a Youtube series of conversations with scholars, thinkers, and writers, which will also be published in book form in French and English.
He is associate member of CARMAH at the Institute of European Ethnology of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, where he completes a habilitation. As part of this, he completes a second book manuscript on minor forms of curation against the backdrop of the European universal museum, based on his postdoctoral research, and teaches across anthropology, art, museums, and heritage at the Department of European Ethnology. Together with Prof Alex Flynn, he coordinates the digital learning platform form*at. During the winter quarter of 2023, he is visiting fellow at the Department of World Arts and Cultures / Dance of the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). Read more about his stay here.
He is author of State of the Arts. An Ethnography of German Theatre and Migration (Cambridge University Press, 2023, and editor of several collections, among them the open-access volume Minor Universality. Rethinking Humanity After Western Universalism (with Markus Messling, 2023, Boston: de Gruyter), Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and Heritage (with Margareta von Oswald, Leuven University Press, 2020), the open-access teaching workbook Awkward Archives. Ethnographic drafts for a modular curriculum (with Margareta von Oswald, 2022, Archive books), the two-volume reference book Der Fremde Blick. Roberto Ciulli und das Theater an der Ruhr (2020, with Alexander Wewerka, Alexander Verlag), the edited volume Otherwise. Rethinking Museums and Heritage (2018, with Sharon Macdonald et al), the special issue Micro-utopias (with Ruy Blanes, Maïté Maskens, and Alex Flynn, 2016), and the book Anthropology, Theatre, and Development (with Alex Flynn, 2015, Palgrave), and in planning The Pregnant Oyster - Doubts on Universalism (with Elena Agudio, Franck Hofmann, and Markus Messling, open-access, Berlin / Milan / Dakar: Archive).
He studied British and American Studies as well as Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Münster (Germany) before completing the Archaeology and Anthropology Tripos with a focus on Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge (2012). He continued to conduct doctoral fieldwork on a migrant-situated public theatre in the postindustrial Ruhr region and received his PhD (2016) for a study entitled State of the Arts. An Anthropology of German Theatre and Postmigrant Society (published with Cambridge University Press in August 2023). At King’s College and the Division of Social Anthropology, he was supervised by Prof James Laidlaw and received the William Wyse Scholarship. During his time in Cambridge, he was founding co-convenor of the Mellon-Newton-funded Cambridge Interdisciplinary Performance Network at the Centre for Research on the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (CRASSH), and a research fellow at the theatre studies collection on Schloss Wahn, Institute of Theatre and Media, University of Cologne (Germany).
From 2016-2020, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH) in the Department of European Ethnology at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, funded by Sharon Macdonald’s Alexander von Humboldt Professorship (2016-2020). As part of his research, he collaborated with artists and curators of art spaces and galleries in Berlin (among them SAVVY Contemporary, the ifa-gallery and the Berlin-Wedding district gallery) to study and think about curatorial practices as forms of troubling of national, universal, and hegemonic narratives, especially against the backdrop of major museum transformations such as the Humboldt Forum in the Berlin City Castle. From 2017-2020, he acted as founding convenor of the Anthropology and the Arts Network of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) together with Prof Roger Sansi (Barcelona). From 2017-2021, he has been founding coordinator with Dr Ruba Totah of the research section and co-founder of the PostHeimat Network on migrant theatre funded by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes and founding member of the theatre and research collective Ruhrorter.
In 2020, he took up a position as postdoctoral researcher and scientific coordinator of the ERC project Minor Universality. Narrative World Productions After Western Universality (PI: Prof Markus Messling) at Saarland University, as part of which he curated a residency, research, and exhibition programme in collaboration with the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin, entitledThe Pregnant Oyster - Doubts on Universalism (June-July 2022). The multilingual research project investigates forms of world-making narratives that emerge out of and after the critique of the violent articulations of Western Universality. The project goes beyond narratives that resort to relativistic or identitarian claims, and focuses instead on concrete, situated narratives of humanity, world, justice, freedom that articulate themselves in "minor" forms of literature, architecture, curating, publishing and so on. The project publishes the open-access book series Beyond Universalism / Partager l'universel and entertains a Youtube series of conversations with scholars, thinkers, and writers, which will also be published in book form in French and English.
He is associate member of CARMAH at the Institute of European Ethnology of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, where he completes a habilitation. As part of this, he completes a second book manuscript on minor forms of curation against the backdrop of the European universal museum, based on his postdoctoral research, and teaches across anthropology, art, museums, and heritage at the Department of European Ethnology. Together with Prof Alex Flynn, he coordinates the digital learning platform form*at. During the winter quarter of 2023, he is visiting fellow at the Department of World Arts and Cultures / Dance of the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). Read more about his stay here.
He is author of State of the Arts. An Ethnography of German Theatre and Migration (Cambridge University Press, 2023, and editor of several collections, among them the open-access volume Minor Universality. Rethinking Humanity After Western Universalism (with Markus Messling, 2023, Boston: de Gruyter), Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and Heritage (with Margareta von Oswald, Leuven University Press, 2020), the open-access teaching workbook Awkward Archives. Ethnographic drafts for a modular curriculum (with Margareta von Oswald, 2022, Archive books), the two-volume reference book Der Fremde Blick. Roberto Ciulli und das Theater an der Ruhr (2020, with Alexander Wewerka, Alexander Verlag), the edited volume Otherwise. Rethinking Museums and Heritage (2018, with Sharon Macdonald et al), the special issue Micro-utopias (with Ruy Blanes, Maïté Maskens, and Alex Flynn, 2016), and the book Anthropology, Theatre, and Development (with Alex Flynn, 2015, Palgrave), and in planning The Pregnant Oyster - Doubts on Universalism (with Elena Agudio, Franck Hofmann, and Markus Messling, open-access, Berlin / Milan / Dakar: Archive).