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Jonas Tinius |
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, and art spaces), focusing on the reflexive agency of artistic cand curatorial work. His research is collaborative and extends into public, instigative, and multimodal fieldwork formats, such as curation and 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 (under contract with Cambridge University Press). 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 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. 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 Constructions After Western Universality (PI: Prof Markus Messling), at Saarland University, as part of which he curates a residency, research, and exhibition programme in collaboration with the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin. 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. We are editing the open-access book series Beyond Universalism / Partager l'universel and entertain a Youtube series of conversations with scholars, thinkers, and writers, which will be published in French, English, and German.
He is associate member of CARMAH at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, where he completes a habilitation, as part of which he completes a second book manuscript based on his postdoctoral research and teaches 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 will be visiting fellow at the Department of World Arts and Cultures / Dance of the University of California, Los Angeles.
He is editor of a number of books, including the open-access volume Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and Heritage (with Margareta von Oswald, Leuven University Press, 2020), 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).
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 (under contract with Cambridge University Press). 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 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. 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 Constructions After Western Universality (PI: Prof Markus Messling), at Saarland University, as part of which he curates a residency, research, and exhibition programme in collaboration with the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin. 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. We are editing the open-access book series Beyond Universalism / Partager l'universel and entertain a Youtube series of conversations with scholars, thinkers, and writers, which will be published in French, English, and German.
He is associate member of CARMAH at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, where he completes a habilitation, as part of which he completes a second book manuscript based on his postdoctoral research and teaches 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 will be visiting fellow at the Department of World Arts and Cultures / Dance of the University of California, Los Angeles.
He is editor of a number of books, including the open-access volume Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and Heritage (with Margareta von Oswald, Leuven University Press, 2020), 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).