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
Photographer: Pia Miller-Aichholz
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Additional Team Members
Photographer: Pia Miller-Aichholz
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
