UPDATES: He was released by presidential decree on July 30, 2022 and now has successfully defended his Master's thesis :Following Unjust Imprisonment, Ahmed Samir Santawy Completes Master’s Studies at CEU (28.9.2023) but the Egyptian authorities have… more »

Kareem Ahmady: "I just simply left". Photo: Ahmady's website One month ago I have written about anthropologist Kareem Ahmady, who has researched child marriage, female genital mutilation (FGM) and sexuality in Iran, before: Iran jails anthropologist for… more »

(via FocaalBlog) In the general public, academics are often viewed as being part of an elite, who lives comfortable lives. In reality this is only true for a small minority of well-paid professors, while the situation for most academics rather… more »

How do people cope? What changes have they observed? How does climate change affect their life and and their relation to the environment? These are some of the important questions that anthropologist Zdenka Sokolíčková asks. more »

Who is crazy? Who is normal? Describing somebody as "not normal" has serious implications for this person, can destroy her life. From an anthropological perspective, there is nothing called normal. What we have are endless ways to lead a more… more »

Not only when we are reading the news, but also when we are on Zoom-conferences, sending messages with Whatsapp, playing silly games on our mobile or when we switch on our robot vacuum to clean the mess in our flat, we are tracked and analyzed by… more »

Do you wear a mask when you meet your friends? Do you? Recently I often had to think of an observation of a Twitter user in Germany: She or he realised that people do wear masks in public transport or in supermarkets but showed careless behaviour when… more »

What are the connections between climate change, global capitalism, xenophobia and white supremacy? Marc Schuller does in his new book something rather unusual: He asks big questions. Humanity's Last Stand. Confronting Global Catastrophe is the name of… more »

When Twitter announced that it had suspended Donald Trump's account, Twitter also censored the voice of Alexandra Elbakyan, the 32 year old creator of the probably most cherished website in the global scientific community: Sci-hub. This website, as most… more »

Why can we spend hours playing video games while many of us get exhausted by much shorter video-conferences? That is without doubt no bad question that the magazine Inverse asks. They turn to an anthropologist who has researched our relation to the… more »

Mai Amer: "I really hope the show encourages viewers to reflecting on and critique certain things they think". Screenshot from her Facebook page How can we better understand the world we live in? Not only here in Europe, but also in many Arab countries,… more »

When we are online we are constantly being watched and tracked. A huge industry has evolved to build profiles about us so that they can predict and influence our behavior - to make us buy products or vote for a specific politician. Our personal… more »

Ahmady has researched child marriage, female genital mutilation (FGM) and sexuality in Iran. In 2015, the BBC reminds us, he published a study suggesting that tens of thousands of Iranian women had undergone female genital mutilation. Until then, Iran had not been widely recognised as a country affected by FGM. more »