Jonas Tinius |
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I am a socio-cultural anthropologist, and currently scientific coordinator and postdoctoral researcher in cultural anthropology at the ERC project Minor Universality. Narrative World Productions After Western Universalism at Saarland University. Prior to that, I was research fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation funded Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage at the Department of European Ethnology of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. I completed my BA and PhD in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, supported by scholarships from the Cambridge European, William Wyse, and Kurt Hahn Trust. During my doctoral fieldwork, I was a research fellow at the theatre archive and collection of the University of Cologne.
For the past decade, my research has grappled with artistic and cultural production in Europe, focusing specifically on public and civic institutions, such as theatres and museums. I consider such institutions as prisms through which societies reckon with difficult pasts that break into the present and seek to prefigure hopeful futures. Through my research, teaching, public engagement, curation, and writing, I seek to create modes of co-production, which reflect on the ways in which academic (anthropological) knowledge production is embroiled in the same quest for understanding and producing contested ideas of world. To this end, I have collaborated with a series of formats and institutions, such as the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, SAVVY Contemporary, or the Marseille Manifesta Biennale. I also co-founded and convened different networks and seminar series, such as the Interdisciplinary Performance Network at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities at the University of Cambridge and the Anthropology and the Arts Network of the European Association of Social Anthropologists. I also collaborated with the research, theatre, and exhibition project Ruhrorter at the Theater an der Ruhr and co-founded the theatre and migration production network Post-Heimat, funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation.
I am currently teaching visual anthropology, the anthropology of art and heritage, as well as curatorial studies at the Academy of Fine Arts (NABA) in Milan and at the Department of European Ethnology of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, where I am also completing my habilitation (second book manuscript), tentatively titled Beyond the Universal Machine. Curating Difficult Heritage Spectres (under contract with de Gruyter). This book analyses and documents curatorial practices that challenge the universalising structures and forms of cultural governance of the European universal museum. It focuses on ethnographic work with activists, artists, and curators in Berlin, Milan, and Marseille. My first monograph State of the Arts. An Ethnography of German Theatre and Migration has just been published with Cambridge University Press (2023) and analyses forms of political self-cultivation, national patronage, and cultural production through theatre in the postindustrial Ruhrvalley. It brings together over ten years of collaborative research with one of the pioneering (post)migrant theatres, the Theater an der Ruhr, its founder, clown, actor, and director Roberto Ciulli, as well as the independent theatre group Ruhrorter founded by actor and director Adem Köstereli.
For the past decade, my research has grappled with artistic and cultural production in Europe, focusing specifically on public and civic institutions, such as theatres and museums. I consider such institutions as prisms through which societies reckon with difficult pasts that break into the present and seek to prefigure hopeful futures. Through my research, teaching, public engagement, curation, and writing, I seek to create modes of co-production, which reflect on the ways in which academic (anthropological) knowledge production is embroiled in the same quest for understanding and producing contested ideas of world. To this end, I have collaborated with a series of formats and institutions, such as the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, SAVVY Contemporary, or the Marseille Manifesta Biennale. I also co-founded and convened different networks and seminar series, such as the Interdisciplinary Performance Network at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities at the University of Cambridge and the Anthropology and the Arts Network of the European Association of Social Anthropologists. I also collaborated with the research, theatre, and exhibition project Ruhrorter at the Theater an der Ruhr and co-founded the theatre and migration production network Post-Heimat, funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation.
I am currently teaching visual anthropology, the anthropology of art and heritage, as well as curatorial studies at the Academy of Fine Arts (NABA) in Milan and at the Department of European Ethnology of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, where I am also completing my habilitation (second book manuscript), tentatively titled Beyond the Universal Machine. Curating Difficult Heritage Spectres (under contract with de Gruyter). This book analyses and documents curatorial practices that challenge the universalising structures and forms of cultural governance of the European universal museum. It focuses on ethnographic work with activists, artists, and curators in Berlin, Milan, and Marseille. My first monograph State of the Arts. An Ethnography of German Theatre and Migration has just been published with Cambridge University Press (2023) and analyses forms of political self-cultivation, national patronage, and cultural production through theatre in the postindustrial Ruhrvalley. It brings together over ten years of collaborative research with one of the pioneering (post)migrant theatres, the Theater an der Ruhr, its founder, clown, actor, and director Roberto Ciulli, as well as the independent theatre group Ruhrorter founded by actor and director Adem Köstereli.