Manon Borel is a lecturer at the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Bern and currently holds a Scientific Policy Grant (Wissenschaftliches Politikstipendium). Her academic interests span anthropology of borders, time, and infrastructure, as well as feminist anthropology, with a focus on Armenia and the South Caucasus.
Manon received her PhD in Social Anthropology (summa cum laude) from the University of Bern in September 2026. For her dissertation, she conducted long-term ethnographic research in the northern Armenian borderlands with Turkey. In a time marked by conflict and geopolitical tension, she explored everyday life at this closed, militarised border and scrutinised the meaning of borders and boundaries and the role of past, present, and future in this geopolitical time of suspense.
Manon holds a BA in International Relations (University of Geneva) and an MA in Social Anthropology (University of Bern). For her PhD, she received a Doc.CH research grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation. Her research project was supervised by Prof. Dr. Sabine Strasser (University of Bern) as main supervisor and Prof. Dr. Mathijs Pelkmans (LSE) as second supervisor.
In autumn 2025, Manon was a visiting researcher at Yerevan State University and the Yerevan Centre for International Education.
