I work as a postdoctoral researcher within the ReloCare project. After my studies in Sociology in Innsbruck and Linz, Austria, I worked for the Institute of Sociology at the Johannes Kepler University Linz for the last four years. There, I was part of the research project Decent Care Work? Transnational Home Care Arrangements, which studied the transnational brokerage of live-in care workers from Central and Eastern European countries in Austrian households. In this context, I also did my PhD on subjectivation and ethnicisation processes in Austrian live-in care arrangements. Within ReloCare, I am particularly interested in social policy, care, and migration, with a special focus on the role of intermediary agents. What does the transnational relocation of elderly care tell us about the transformations of welfare states in Europe? What role do private agencies play in this emerging market and in how far do they shape how elderly care is provided and received? What subjectivities emerge in the interactions between the different parties involved? And how do intersecting social inequalities and power structures come into play? Prior to my academic career, I also worked with people with mental and physical handicaps as well as with elderly people. All these experiences have led me to take a keen interest in the well-being of elderly and the care that is given to them, tying in with our aims with ReloCare.
Kristine Krause
I am leading ReloCare as the principal investigator (PI) and work as an associate professor at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). I hold a PhD from the University of Oxford and have specialised in questions of transnational and long-term care, cultural diversity, and dementia. As a medical anthropologist, I regard care as an entry point to study wider societal and political issues. I am originally from Germany where I studied at the Free University of Berlin. Before my academic career, I worked in a variety of fields ranging from event management to home-based elderly care to assisting severely physically disabled people. These work experiences have made me an engaged academic and contributed to my interest in care practices. Since I joined the UvA in 2014, I have been working with other members of the Long-Term Care and Dementia group to develop what we call ‘Dialogue Evenings’ for researchers, people with dementia, their family members, and care professionals. Since 2018, I have been preparing ReloCare with a pilot research on German elderly living in Polish care homes. Previous research experiences have brought me to Ghana, the UK, and Germany. Before moving to Amsterdam, I worked as a research fellow at the Humboldt University in Berlin and the Max Planck Institute in Göttingen.
k.krause@uva.nl+31 626 873 481
Kristine Krause
I am leading ReloCare as the principal investigator (PI) and work as an associate professor at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). I hold a PhD from the University of Oxford and have specialised in questions of transnational and long-term care, cultural diversity, and dementia.
As a medical anthropologist, I regard care as an entry point to study wider societal and political issues. I am originally from Germany where I studied at the Free University of Berlin.
Before my academic career, I worked in a variety of fields ranging from event management to home-based elderly care to assisting severely physically disabled people. These work experiences have made me an engaged academic and contributed to my interest in care practices.
Since I joined the UvA in 2014, I have been working with other members of the Long-Term Care and Dementia group to develop what we call ‘Dialogue Evenings’ for researchers, people with dementia, their family members, and care professionals.
Since 2018, I have been preparing ReloCare with a pilot research on German elderly living in Polish care homes. Previous research experiences have brought me to Ghana, the UK, and Germany. Before moving to Amsterdam, I worked as a research fellow at the Humboldt University in Berlin and the Max Planck Institute in Göttingen.
k.krause@uva.nl+31 626 873 481
Veronika Prieler
I work as a postdoctoral researcher within the ReloCare project. After my studies in Sociology in Innsbruck and Linz, Austria, I worked for the Institute of Sociology at the Johannes Kepler University Linz for the last four years.
There, I was part of the research project Decent Care Work? Transnational Home Care Arrangements, which studied the transnational brokerage of live-in care workers from Central and Eastern European countries in Austrian households.
Within ReloCare, I am particularly interested in social policy, care, and migration, with a special focus on the role of intermediary agents. What does the transnational relocation of elderly care tell us about the transformations of welfare states in Europe? What role do private agencies play in this emerging market and in how far do they shape how elderly care is provided and received? What subjectivities emerge in the interactions between the different parties involved? And how do intersecting social inequalities and power structures come into play?
Prior to my academic career, I also worked with people with mental and physical handicaps as well as with elderly people. All these experiences have led me to take a keen interest in the well-being of elderly and the care that is given to them, tying in with our aims with ReloCare.
v.prieler@uva.nlMariusz Sapieha
Conducting research on diagnostic processes in Polish psychiatry clinics, I earned my master’s degree in Anthropology from the University of Warsaw and in Medical Anthropology from the University of Amsterdam. In addition to my academic career, I have gained work experience in a great variety of places and sectors, from working in a gift shop next to the second most important waterfall in Iceland to collecting Covid statistics for a care home chain in the UK. Within the ReloCare team, I am responsible for the study of care relocation practices in Poland. I speak Polish, English, and German, and have been involved in the study from the very beginning; first as a research assistant in the ReloCare pilot study and now as a PhD researcher. I am conducting multi-sited fieldwork for which I travel through Poland to talk with numerous parties about the various practices involved in organising care relocation. I am particularly interested in entrepreneurship, materialities, infrastructures, and the historical entanglements of places. The main questions that will guide my research are: How does the care relocation of German-speaking elderly affect and/or produce new care infrastructures in the local places they are moved to? How do all involved parties (re)imagine what care looks like and what does this mean for local care infrastructures? How do Polish entrepreneurs for example try to accommodate care tailored to (potential) German clients? And what kind of aspirations do these (re)imaginations bring about?
m.r.sapieha@uva.nl
Mariusz Sapieha
Conducting research on diagnostic processes in Polish psychiatry clinics, I earned my master’s degree in Anthropology from the University of Warsaw and in Medical Anthropology from the University of Amsterdam.
In addition to my academic career, I have gained work experience in a great variety of places and sectors, from working in a gift shop next to the second most important waterfall in Iceland to collecting Covid statistics for a care home chain in the UK.
Within the ReloCare team, I am responsible for the study of care relocation practices in Poland. I speak Polish, English, and German, and have been involved in the study from the very beginning; first as a research assistant in the ReloCare pilot study and now as a PhD researcher.
I am conducting multi-sited fieldwork for which I travel through Poland to talk with numerous parties about the various practices involved in organising care relocation. I am particularly interested in entrepreneurship, materialities, infrastructures, and the historical entanglements of places.
The main questions that will guide my research are: How does the care relocation of German-speaking elderly affect and/or produce new care infrastructures in the local places they are moved to? How do all involved parties (re)imagine what care looks like and what does this mean for local care infrastructures? How do Polish entrepreneurs for example try to accommodate care tailored to (potential) German clients? And what kind of aspirations do these (re)imaginations bring about?
m.r.sapieha@uva.nl
Matouš Jelínek
I am a PhD candidate at the anthropology department of the University of Amsterdam. Having been born and raised in the Czech Republic, I am responsible for the Czech and Slovakian sides of our study. Within ReloCare, I am interested in the everyday realities of care homes, particularly the interactions between German-speaking elderly and the context and history of the localities they have been relocated to. Throughout my academic career, I have been interested in different mechanisms of ethnic identification and self-identification, as well as the intersections of ethnicity, gender, and class in the context of education, institutional care, and social services. I earned my bachelor’s degree in social anthropology and gender studies, my first master´s degree in sociology from Masaryk University in Brno, my second master’s in the social anthropology of development at the University of Bergen in Norway, and my third master’s in social work from Masaryk University in Brno. In the past, I also worked as a social worker at a youth club and as a researcher at the Research Institute for Labour and Social Affairs (RILSA). Moreover, I have extensive experience in caring for socially excluded children, persons with disabilities, and seniors. All these experiences have shaped and influenced my interest in caregiving practices and tie in directly with several of our research foci.
m.jelinek@uva.nlMatouš Jelínek
I am a PhD candidate at the anthropology department of the University of Amsterdam. Having been born and raised in the Czech Republic, I am responsible for the Czech and Slovakian sides of our study.
Within ReloCare, I am interested in the everyday realities of care homes, particularly the interactions between German-speaking elderly and the context and history of the localities they have been relocated to.
Throughout my academic career, I have been interested in different mechanisms of ethnic identification and self-identification, as well as the intersections of ethnicity, gender, and class in the context of education, institutional care, and social services.
I earned my bachelor’s degree in social anthropology and gender studies, my first master´s degree in sociology from Masaryk University in Brno, my second master’s in the social anthropology of development at the University of Bergen in Norway, and my third master’s in social work from Masaryk University in Brno.
In the past, I also worked as a social worker at a youth club and as a researcher at the Research Institute for Labour and Social Affairs (RILSA). Moreover, I have extensive experience in caring for socially excluded children, persons with disabilities, and seniors.
All these experiences have shaped and influenced my interest in caregiving practices and tie in directly with several of our research foci.
m.jelinek@uva.nlAdditional Team Members
I am a lecturer and director of the Anthropology Bachelor programme at the University of Amsterdam. My PhD, based on fieldwork in Thuringia, investigated socialist salvation politics and the material culture of the former GDR, and collective fantasies around western consumption before and after the Wende. Recently, I have been conducting fieldwork in one of the last lignite mining villages in Germany (Brandenburg), bordering Poland. The region, hailed for its brown-coal production under Socialism, struggles with pollution, unemployment, dilapidation, and an ageing population. In my research, I investigate which forms of sociability and solidarity offer the region’s inhabitants a solid footing. I support ReloCare as a co-promoter.
I am an assistant professor at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam and a member of the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research. I studied anthropology and linguistics at the University of Amsterdam and did my PhD research in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) on codeswitching; the use of more than one language in everyday interactions. In recent years, I have been focusing on the study of youth language and popular culture, and the relationship between the use of regional language and regional identity. My most recent fieldwork site is East Zeelandic Flanders, a rural area struggling with closing schools, shops, and declining public services. The goal of my research, in which the guiding theoretical concept is social resilience, is to find out how residents handle these challenges. I support ReloCare as a co-promoter.
Photographer: Pia Miller-Aichholz
I am a medical anthropologist from Hungary with an interdisciplinary background. My role within the ReloCare team is to support the project with the research conducted in Hungary, executing tasks such as mapping online resources, contacting relevant institutions, and translating various materials from Hungarian to English and vice-versa. In addition to working on the ReloCare project, I have been exploring questions related to female healthcare workers’ mental health in Hungary for my master’s thesis. More generally, my interests include healthcare systems and medical culture in Eastern European settings as well as questions surrounding mental health. I am particularly interested in how the mental health of individuals relates to the structural and institutional characteristics of different contexts and feminist approaches to health and illness-related topics.
I am a medical anthropologist with a background in disability studies. My recent project focuses on how early-onset dementia shapes familial relationships. In the past, I have researched how people experience chronic illness, specifically focusing on topics such as (in)dependence, reciprocity, and (in)visibility. As a team coach, I support ReloCare as a team coach and dementia specialist. Specifically, I help create space for addressing non-academic issues such as team dynamics, work pressure, planning, and personal development.
I am a full professor in ‘Anthropology of Everyday Ethics in Health Care’ at the University of Amsterdam Anthropology department and the Ethics, Law, and Humanities department at the Amsterdam University Medical Centre. Furthermore, I work with the Medical Ethics section at the University Medical Centre in Amsterdam. My research and teaching are at the crossroads of humanities and social sciences, signified by empirical ethics or the anthropology of everyday ethics. With this approach, I study how ‘the good’ emerges in different forms in care practices, in particular in relation to the introduction of new technologies. Using this same approach, I study questions of epistemology and everyday ethics in scientific practices. I support ReloCare as an overall ethical advisor.
As a medical anthropologist, I am interested in how life at the margins takes shape in institutional care practices. I obtained my PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 2019, conducting an ethnography of everyday life and care in residential dementia care homes in the Netherlands. In my thesis, I described and analysed practices that involve the enactment of “subject positions” for people with dementia. These practices can complement or even contradict the negative notion that life with dementia is merely a life of loss and suffering.
In my post-doctoral research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, I joined the Forms of Care study on end-of-life care, which studied the stopping or not starting of new treatments as forms of care. In this study and within my fellowship research on patient and family experiences of intensive care and COVID, I further developed my collaborative approach to care research, driven by a commitment to theoretically rich work that can inform and improve care practices.
Currently, I am based at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care of the University of Oxford, where I conduct an ethnography on timely access to general practice appointments in the UK. I support ReloCare as an ethics advisor on vulnerability; I help the team navigate research with people who are deemed vulnerable and less easy to include, and furthermore co-supervise Matouš Jelínek.
After studying social anthropology at the Universities of Bonn and Cologne, I received my doctoral degree at the Free University in Berlin in 2002 with a dissertation about post-socialist privatization’s consequences on social inequality (see Thelen 2003). Following positions at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle (Saale), the Humboldt University in Berlin, and the Universities of Zurich and Bayreuth, I became a full professor at the University in Vienna in 2012. While I started my academic career as an economic anthropologist, my later research projects in Germany, Hungary, Romania, and Serbia increasingly led me to focus on topics related to care, state, and kinship. My central theoretical considerations involve care relations not only as expressions of but also as a driving force behind social change and exclusion (Thelen 2015, 2021). From that perspective, care for senior citizens lends itself exceptionally well to exploring shifts in political belonging (Thelen und Coe 2019). I support ReloCare as an overall advisor.
I am a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Germany. Before this, I was a Professor at Rikkyo University in Tokyo, Japan (2012-2020), and taught at the National University of Singapore (2002-2012) as well as the University of Hull in the United Kingdom (2000-2002).
Within my research, I take a particular interest in issues related to ageing and care in transnational contexts. More specifically, I have worked on the international migration of care workers as well as retirees who seek care at their destination. I conducted my fieldwork research mainly in East and Southeast Asia regions (China, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam).
Since 2020, I have been exploring the emerging new service industry around death and dying, in Japan and other places, which fill in infrastructural gaps between the state, community, and family. I support ReloCare as an associated researcher and advisor.
I am an anthropologist and historian interested in the anthropology of migration, medical anthropology, and studies on memory. I researched access to healthcare and health-related practises of Polish migrant women in a few European countries, which resulted in my book Better Medical Landscapes? Health, Illness, and Curing of Polish Migrant Women in an Anthropological Perspective [in Polish], and articles on reproductive health, medical travels, and medical pluralism. In 2019/2020, I received the Fulbright Senior Scholar Award from Georgetown University, Washington D.C., for the project “Medical experiences and access to healthcare of European immigrants in Washington D.C.”
I also studied the mobility of Polish nurses, particularly in Norway. At the Centre for Migration Studies, I recently conducted research for the Horizon 2020 project “Norms and Values in the European Migration and Refugee Crisis” (NoVaMigra) with an emphasis on civil society’s activities. Its results were published in a Europe and the Refugee Response. A Crisis of Values? volume, co-edited by Elżbieta M. Goździak and Brigitte Suter; as well as articles on Polish Solidarians and the role of religion in activism. I am an associate professor at the Department of Anthropology and Ethnology at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and director of the Centre for Migration Studies. In my free time, I travel, grow veggies and flowers, read novels, and knit. I support ReloCare as an ethics advisor for Poland.
I am a social anthropologist and assistant professor at the Social and Cultural Anthropology department at Charles University in Prague. My research focuses on migration, transnational care practices, globalisation of care, ageing in migration, and applied anthropology. I hold a Visiting PhD scholarship at Rothberg International School, part of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (2000/2001), along with a Sasakawa PhD Scholarship for Young Leaders (PhD research on Ukrainian transnational mothers in The Czech Republic) at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main in 2007, and an Erste Fellowship for Social Scientists-Generations in Dialogue (with the project Ageing, Care and Migration -research on Ukrainian live-in migrant care workers in elderly care) in 2010/2011.
Moreover, I am a research fellow for the Global Conflicts and Local Interactions research programme (Strategy AV21) at the Czech Academy of Sciences, a research fellow at The Carl Polanyi Social Research Centre for Global Studies (Corvinus University in Budapest), and a member of the State and Care Network at the University of Vienna. Furthermore, I am a member of the editorial board for the disciplinary journal Gender a výzkum /Gender and Research. I support ReloCare as an ethics advisor for research in Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
I am a sociologist and research fellow at the Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, Institute for Regional Studies in Budapest. I hold a PhD in sociology from the University of Pécs in Hungary and my research focuses on transnational care, care infrastructures, ageing, and the silver economy. Since 2020, I have been studying the marketization of care in Hungary. My current research projects focus on lifestyle migration of retirees, the silver economy, and related social innovations in eldercare.
Furthermore, I have been a member of the EuroCare research network since 2020 and the Karl Polanyi Research Center for Global Social Studies since 2017. I organize scientific webinars and conferences for the Department of Qualitative Sociology at the Hungarian Sociological Association. I support ReloCare as an advisor for research in Hungary.
I am a Professor in Migration and Transnationalism at the Humboldt-Universität in Berlin (since 2013) and Head of the Integration Department at the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research, DeZIM, in Berlin (since 2018). I hold a doctoral degree in Sociology from the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich in Germany (2005), a Master of Arts in Cultural Studies from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow in Poland (2001), and a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from the University of Warsaw in Poland (1999).
Previously, I worked for the Institute of Sociology at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich (2006-2013) and the Max-Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen, Germany (2010-2013). My research interests include diversity, conviviality, and racism within contexts of transnational social relations, intersectionality, and qualitative research methods. My most recent book, published by Palgrave in March 2022, is Revisualising Intersectionality (co-authored with Elahe Haschemi Yekani and Tiara Roxanne). I support ReloCare as an advisor.
I am a professor at the department of Social Sciences and Business at Roskilde University in Denmark, specialising in the governance of care for the oldest old – and its theorisation. I work interdisciplinary between political science and sociology and have a PhD in political science from Aarhus University. I focus on the state and its ways of understanding care needs, diversity, and care qualifications in various policies and between different levels of governance (local, national, and international).
I am particularly interested in the ways a state tries to ‘do good’ and frames elderly and care professionals in particular ways, along with the struggles and translations at various levels, including elements of de-politisation (silencing). In other words, the kind of subjectivities care professionals and the ‘oldest old’ have or are allowed to inhabit.
Recently, I analysed fiction and memoirs to understand some of the challenges elderly, their families, and sometimes even professionals encounter at the receiving end of policies. I draw upon feminist theorising on care, recognition, state, and neo-liberalising. Methodologically, I use discourse analysis, interviews, etc. I co-edited three books: Dilemmas of Care in the Nordic Welfare State – Continuity and Change (2005), Europeanisation, Care and Gender: Global Complexities (2011), and A care crisis in the Nordic welfare states? (2022), as well as Struggles in (Elderly) care – a feminist View (2017) and published in leading international journals. I support ReloCare as an advisor.
I support ReloCare as an advisor.
I am an Ethnology graduate from Heidelberg University and hold an MSc in Medical Anthropology and Sociology from the University of Amsterdam. I have carried out ethnographic research in Cameroon and Poland, focusing on migration, ageing, and everyday life within care institutions. After my studies, I worked in the field of international relations to find out more about the making of migration policies. Currently, I am applying my knowledge of social science research methods, while monitoring and evaluating development projects for a non-governmental organisation in Switzerland. I support ReloCare as an associated researcher.
I am a senior researcher and lecturer at the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Zurich. I studied social sciences at the University of Lausanne and the University of Amsterdam, and completed my PhD on domestic worker migration in and from Indonesia at the University of Bern. Currently, I am working on a research project entitled ‘Caring not to Forget: Memory, Colonialism, and Loss in Dutch Eldercare’ for which I carried out 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Netherlands (funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation). Zooming in on nursing homes explicitly designed to cater to Indonesian and Moluccan elderly born in the Dutch East Indies, I take these nursing homes as an entry point to explore the relations between memory, ageing, and loss in contemporary postcolonial Europe. I support ReloCare as an associated researcher.
I am a freelance illustrator and graphic designer and supported ReloCare as a graphic designer. Currently, I am studying Visual Communication at the University of Arts in Berlin where I live with my dog Zissou. Using illustration instead of or in conjunction with photography is an approach I have always found interesting, so I really enjoyed working on the different pieces for this website and finding the right way to portray the project’s foci and objectives whilst also bringing my own style into the artwork.
I am a social anthropologist and designer. An important element in any research project is the ability to share your findings and present the research. I designed the ReloCare presentation slide decks as well as the project’s forms, business cards, and other visual aids. In my own research, I focus on the sociotechnical assemblages of labour logistics.
I am an etnographic content creator and support ReloCare as web designer and copywriter. Having completed my studies in Film Theory and Film Production at Santa Monica College in California, a Documentary Filmmaking and Journalism programme at the University of Television and Film in Munich, a Bachelor’s in Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, and a Master’s in Visual Anthropology – both at the University of Amsterdam, I bring a varied background to my work. Combining my knowledge of visual and web design with storytelling and ethnographic research, I give great thought to how content can be used to (re)present ideas, organisations, research projects, and companies – inspiring the name of my freelance company: More than Content (Meer dan Content). Taking the client’s objectives and user experience at heart, I approach my projects as any storyteller should: with great care.
I am a photographer and founder of temet.studio. I studied Photography at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and started developing my professional career alongside my practice as an artist. With temet.studio, I mainly focus on photographing exhibitions or architecture for artists and architects, but I am also experienced in portraits and commercial work. For ReloCare, I took care of portraying the main team members.
I am a recent MSc graduate in Medical Anthropology and Sociology from the UvA and currently beginning my PhD in Medical Anthropology and Public Health in assisted reproductive technologies, fertility, reproductive care, and justice. As a research assistant, I have been supporting the ReloCare team by streamlining communication, connecting external advisors, organising team meetings and conferences, and aiding with ERC items.
Additional Team Members
I am a lecturer and director of the Anthropology Bachelor programme at the University of Amsterdam. My PhD, based on fieldwork in Thuringia, investigated socialist salvation politics and the material culture of the former GDR, and collective fantasies around western consumption before and after the Wende. Recently, I have been conducting fieldwork in one of the last lignite mining villages in Germany (Brandenburg), bordering Poland. The region, hailed for its brown-coal production under Socialism, struggles with pollution, unemployment, dilapidation, and an ageing population. In my research, I investigate which forms of sociability and solidarity offer the region’s inhabitants a solid footing. I support ReloCare as a co-promoter.
I am an assistant professor at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam and a member of the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research. I studied anthropology and linguistics at the University of Amsterdam and did my PhD research in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) on codeswitching; the use of more than one language in everyday interactions. In recent years, I have been focusing on the study of youth language and popular culture, and the relationship between the use of regional language and regional identity. My most recent fieldwork site is East Zeelandic Flanders, a rural area struggling with closing schools, shops, and declining public services. The goal of my research, in which the guiding theoretical concept is social resilience, is to find out how residents handle these challenges. I support ReloCare as a co-promoter.
Photographer: Pia Miller-Aichholz
I am a medical anthropologist from Hungary with an interdisciplinary background. My role within the ReloCare team is to support the project with the research conducted in Hungary, executing tasks such as mapping online resources, contacting relevant institutions, and translating various materials from Hungarian to English and vice-versa. In addition to working on the ReloCare project, I have been exploring questions related to female healthcare workers’ mental health in Hungary for my master’s thesis. More generally, my interests include healthcare systems and medical culture in Eastern European settings as well as questions surrounding mental health. I am particularly interested in how the mental health of individuals relates to the structural and institutional characteristics of different contexts and feminist approaches to health and illness-related topics.
I am a medical anthropologist with a background in disability studies. My recent project focuses on how early-onset dementia shapes familial relationships. In the past, I have researched how people experience chronic illness, specifically focusing on topics such as (in)dependence, reciprocity, and (in)visibility. As a team coach, I support ReloCare as a team coach and dementia specialist. Specifically, I help create space for addressing non-academic issues such as team dynamics, work pressure, planning, and personal development.
I am a full professor in ‘Anthropology of Everyday Ethics in Health Care’ at the University of Amsterdam Anthropology department and the Ethics, Law, and Humanities department at the Amsterdam University Medical Centre. Furthermore, I work with the Medical Ethics section at the University Medical Centre in Amsterdam. My research and teaching are at the crossroads of humanities and social sciences, signified by empirical ethics or the anthropology of everyday ethics. With this approach, I study how ‘the good’ emerges in different forms in care practices, in particular in relation to the introduction of new technologies. Using this same approach, I study questions of epistemology and everyday ethics in scientific practices. I support ReloCare as an overall ethical advisor.
As a medical anthropologist, I am interested in how life at the margins takes shape in institutional care practices. I obtained my PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 2019, conducting an ethnography of everyday life and care in residential dementia care homes in the Netherlands. In my thesis, I described and analysed practices that involve the enactment of “subject positions” for people with dementia. These practices can complement or even contradict the negative notion that life with dementia is merely a life of loss and suffering.
In my post-doctoral research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, I joined the Forms of Care study on end-of-life care, which studied the stopping or not starting of new treatments as forms of care. In this study and within my fellowship research on patient and family experiences of intensive care and COVID, I further developed my collaborative approach to care research, driven by a commitment to theoretically rich work that can inform and improve care practices.
Currently, I am based at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care of the University of Oxford, where I conduct an ethnography on timely access to general practice appointments in the UK. I support ReloCare as an ethics advisor on vulnerability; I help the team navigate research with people who are deemed vulnerable and less easy to include, and furthermore co-supervise Matouš Jelínek.
After studying social anthropology at the Universities of Bonn and Cologne, I received my doctoral degree at the Free University in Berlin in 2002 with a dissertation about post-socialist privatization’s consequences on social inequality (see Thelen 2003). Following positions at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle (Saale), the Humboldt University in Berlin, and the Universities of Zurich and Bayreuth, I became a full professor at the University in Vienna in 2012. While I started my academic career as an economic anthropologist, my later research projects in Germany, Hungary, Romania, and Serbia increasingly led me to focus on topics related to care, state, and kinship. My central theoretical considerations involve care relations not only as expressions of but also as a driving force behind social change and exclusion (Thelen 2015, 2021). From that perspective, care for senior citizens lends itself exceptionally well to exploring shifts in political belonging (Thelen und Coe 2019). I support ReloCare as an overall advisor.
I am a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Germany. Before this, I was a Professor at Rikkyo University in Tokyo, Japan (2012-2020), and taught at the National University of Singapore (2002-2012) as well as the University of Hull in the United Kingdom (2000-2002).
Within my research, I take a particular interest in issues related to ageing and care in transnational contexts. More specifically, I have worked on the international migration of care workers as well as retirees who seek care at their destination. I conducted my fieldwork research mainly in East and Southeast Asia regions (China, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam).
Since 2020, I have been exploring the emerging new service industry around death and dying, in Japan and other places, which fill in infrastructural gaps between the state, community, and family. I support ReloCare as an associated researcher and advisor.
I am an anthropologist and historian interested in the anthropology of migration, medical anthropology, and studies on memory. I researched access to healthcare and health-related practises of Polish migrant women in a few European countries, which resulted in my book Better Medical Landscapes? Health, Illness, and Curing of Polish Migrant Women in an Anthropological Perspective [in Polish], and articles on reproductive health, medical travels, and medical pluralism. In 2019/2020, I received the Fulbright Senior Scholar Award from Georgetown University, Washington D.C., for the project “Medical experiences and access to healthcare of European immigrants in Washington D.C.”
I also studied the mobility of Polish nurses, particularly in Norway. At the Centre for Migration Studies, I recently conducted research for the Horizon 2020 project “Norms and Values in the European Migration and Refugee Crisis” (NoVaMigra) with an emphasis on civil society’s activities. Its results were published in a Europe and the Refugee Response. A Crisis of Values? volume, co-edited by Elżbieta M. Goździak and Brigitte Suter; as well as articles on Polish Solidarians and the role of religion in activism. I am an associate professor at the Department of Anthropology and Ethnology at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and director of the Centre for Migration Studies. In my free time, I travel, grow veggies and flowers, read novels, and knit. I support ReloCare as an ethics advisor for Poland.
I am a social anthropologist and assistant professor at the Social and Cultural Anthropology department at Charles University in Prague. My research focuses on migration, transnational care practices, globalisation of care, ageing in migration, and applied anthropology. I hold a Visiting PhD scholarship at Rothberg International School, part of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (2000/2001), along with a Sasakawa PhD Scholarship for Young Leaders (PhD research on Ukrainian transnational mothers in The Czech Republic) at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main in 2007, and an Erste Fellowship for Social Scientists-Generations in Dialogue (with the project Ageing, Care and Migration -research on Ukrainian live-in migrant care workers in elderly care) in 2010/2011.
Moreover, I am a research fellow for the Global Conflicts and Local Interactions research programme (Strategy AV21) at the Czech Academy of Sciences, a research fellow at The Carl Polanyi Social Research Centre for Global Studies (Corvinus University in Budapest), and a member of the State and Care Network at the University of Vienna. Furthermore, I am a member of the editorial board for the disciplinary journal Gender a výzkum /Gender and Research. I support ReloCare as an ethics advisor for research in Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
I am a sociologist and research fellow at the Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, Institute for Regional Studies in Budapest. I hold a PhD in sociology from the University of Pécs in Hungary and my research focuses on transnational care, care infrastructures, ageing, and the silver economy. Since 2020, I have been studying the marketization of care in Hungary. My current research projects focus on lifestyle migration of retirees, the silver economy, and related social innovations in eldercare.
Furthermore, I have been a member of the EuroCare research network since 2020 and the Karl Polanyi Research Center for Global Social Studies since 2017. I organize scientific webinars and conferences for the Department of Qualitative Sociology at the Hungarian Sociological Association. I support ReloCare as an advisor for research in Hungary.
I am a Professor in Migration and Transnationalism at the Humboldt-Universität in Berlin (since 2013) and Head of the Integration Department at the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research, DeZIM, in Berlin (since 2018). I hold a doctoral degree in Sociology from the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich in Germany (2005), a Master of Arts in Cultural Studies from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow in Poland (2001), and a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from the University of Warsaw in Poland (1999).
Previously, I worked for the Institute of Sociology at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich (2006-2013) and the Max-Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen, Germany (2010-2013). My research interests include diversity, conviviality, and racism within contexts of transnational social relations, intersectionality, and qualitative research methods. My most recent book, published by Palgrave in March 2022, is Revisualising Intersectionality (co-authored with Elahe Haschemi Yekani and Tiara Roxanne). I support ReloCare as an advisor.
I am a professor at the department of Social Sciences and Business at Roskilde University in Denmark, specialising in the governance of care for the oldest old – and its theorisation. I work interdisciplinary between political science and sociology and have a PhD in political science from Aarhus University. I focus on the state and its ways of understanding care needs, diversity, and care qualifications in various policies and between different levels of governance (local, national, and international).
I am particularly interested in the ways a state tries to ‘do good’ and frames elderly and care professionals in particular ways, along with the struggles and translations at various levels, including elements of de-politisation (silencing). In other words, the kind of subjectivities care professionals and the ‘oldest old’ have or are allowed to inhabit.
Recently, I analysed fiction and memoirs to understand some of the challenges elderly, their families, and sometimes even professionals encounter at the receiving end of policies. I draw upon feminist theorising on care, recognition, state, and neo-liberalising. Methodologically, I use discourse analysis, interviews, etc. I co-edited three books: Dilemmas of Care in the Nordic Welfare State – Continuity and Change (2005), Europeanisation, Care and Gender: Global Complexities (2011), and A care crisis in the Nordic welfare states? (2022), as well as Struggles in (Elderly) care – a feminist View (2017) and published in leading international journals. I support ReloCare as an advisor.
I support ReloCare as an advisor.
I am an Ethnology graduate from Heidelberg University and hold an MSc in Medical Anthropology and Sociology from the University of Amsterdam. I have carried out ethnographic research in Cameroon and Poland, focusing on migration, ageing, and everyday life within care institutions. After my studies, I worked in the field of international relations to find out more about the making of migration policies. Currently, I am applying my knowledge of social science research methods, while monitoring and evaluating development projects for a non-governmental organisation in Switzerland. I support ReloCare as an associated researcher.
I am a senior researcher and lecturer at the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Zurich. I studied social sciences at the University of Lausanne and the University of Amsterdam, and completed my PhD on domestic worker migration in and from Indonesia at the University of Bern. Currently, I am working on a research project entitled ‘Caring not to Forget: Memory, Colonialism, and Loss in Dutch Eldercare’ for which I carried out 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Netherlands (funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation). Zooming in on nursing homes explicitly designed to cater to Indonesian and Moluccan elderly born in the Dutch East Indies, I take these nursing homes as an entry point to explore the relations between memory, ageing, and loss in contemporary postcolonial Europe. I support ReloCare as an associated researcher.
I am a freelance illustrator and graphic designer and supported ReloCare as a graphic designer. Currently, I am studying Visual Communication at the University of Arts in Berlin where I live with my dog Zissou. Using illustration instead of or in conjunction with photography is an approach I have always found interesting, so I really enjoyed working on the different pieces for this website and finding the right way to portray the project’s foci and objectives whilst also bringing my own style into the artwork.
I am a social anthropologist and designer. An important element in any research project is the ability to share your findings and present the research. I designed the ReloCare presentation slide decks as well as the project’s forms, business cards, and other visual aids. In my own research, I focus on the sociotechnical assemblages of labour logistics.
I am an etnographic content creator and support ReloCare as web designer and copywriter. Having completed my studies in Film Theory and Film Production at Santa Monica College in California, a Documentary Filmmaking and Journalism programme at the University of Television and Film in Munich, a Bachelor’s in Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, and a Master’s in Visual Anthropology – both at the University of Amsterdam, I bring a varied background to my work. Combining my knowledge of visual and web design with storytelling and ethnographic research, I give great thought to how content can be used to (re)present ideas, organisations, research projects, and companies – inspiring the name of my freelance company: More than Content (Meer dan Content). Taking the client’s objectives and user experience at heart, I approach my projects as any storyteller should: with great care.
I am a photographer and founder of temet.studio. I studied Photography at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and started developing my professional career alongside my practice as an artist. With temet.studio, I mainly focus on photographing exhibitions or architecture for artists and architects, but I am also experienced in portraits and commercial work. For ReloCare, I took care of portraying the main team members.
I am a recent MSc graduate in Medical Anthropology and Sociology from the UvA and currently beginning my PhD in Medical Anthropology and Public Health in assisted reproductive technologies, fertility, reproductive care, and justice. As a research assistant, I have been supporting the ReloCare team by streamlining communication, connecting external advisors, organising team meetings and conferences, and aiding with ERC items.
