Research interests:
- nature-culture relations
- science studies
- industrial ethnography
- supply chains
- extractive economies
Short bio:
Jonas Köppel is a post-doctoral researcher and lecturer at the Institute of Social Anthropology, working at the intersections between economic anthropology, science studies and political ecology. He obtained his PhD degree in Anthropology and Sociology from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. His dissertation project focused on the technopolitical issues surrounding lithium extraction and transformation in Bolivia, where he conducted extensive fieldwork with diverse people involved with this critical matter, in particular scientists and engineers. His research was an enquiry into lithium’s significance beyond, yet intimately tied to, places of extraction.
More broadly, Jonas is interested in anthropology’s potential to comprehend and portray the world across places, scales and fields of practice. In particular, he wonders what that potential might contribute to addressing macro problems, from climate crisis to social inequality. Such questions, he is convinced, are best grappled with collectively, like in the interdisciplinary research projects about lithium and batteries that have shaped his academic trajectory. He also believes that they call for experimental ways of doing and communicating research and that ethnography provides the methodological generosity that different stories require to emerge.
