Authors

Caterina Borelli has a BA in sciences and techniques of interculturality from the University of Trieste and an MA in social anthropology from the University of Barcelona. Her master’s thesis investigated the relationship between urban renewal and social imaginaries in Barcelona. Between 2009 and 2012 she conducted research in Sarajevo focusing on the transformation of the city following war and postsocialist transition. She defended her PhD dissertation, titled “Post-Traumatic City: Marijin Dvor and Mount Trebević, Two Urban Spaces in Transition in Sarajevo,” in October 2012 in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Barcelona.

Iveta Hajdáková is a PhD candidate in anthropology at Charles University in Prague. Her research focuses on luxury hospitality and gastronomy in the Czech Republic, service work, the consumption of luxury services, and postsocialist transformation of hospitality and gastronomy. She was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Columbia University in New York during 2012–2013.

Gertrud Hüwelmeier is an anthropologist and senior research fellow at the Humboldt University of Berlin and senior research partner at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Department of Socio-Cultural Diversity, in Göttingen. She has published widely on migration, religion, and transnationalism, and since 2011 has been directing a new research project on “The Global Bazaar,” funded by the German Research Foundation. The project focuses on marketplaces, cross-border social and economic ties among migrants in postsocialist countries in Europe and Vietnam. Recent publications include the coedited volume Traveling Spirits: Migrants, Markets and Mobilities (Routledge, 2010).

Anna Kruglova earned a diploma in Chinese studies from Irkutsk State Linguistic University. She worked for many years in China as an interpreter and an international trade coordinator. After a major career change, she is now an anthropologist studying to complete her PhD in social and cultural anthropology at the University of Toronto. Her research project, supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, examines perceptions of risk and uncertainty, the connection between language and experience, and the construction of events among the “children of perestroika” generation in the geopolitical space of “the Russian provincial city.”

Fabio Mattioli obtained his BA in political philosophy from Florence University and his MA in social anthropology at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS, Paris). Before joining the PhD program in anthropology at the City University of New York, he was a visiting researcher at the Saints Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje. Mattioli’s work examines credit and debt relations in the building industry in Skopje. He is also interested in economic anthropology, urban anthropology, aesthetics, postsocialism, and ethnicity. His secret dream is to learn how to prepare burek.

Agnieszka Pasieka holds a PhD in social anthropology from Martin Luther University in Halle, Germany. Her doctoral dissertation, “Seven Ways to God: The Dynamics of Religious Pluralism in Rural Southern Poland” (2012), discusses the situation of religious and ethnic minorities in the context of church-state relations in Poland. She was a fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Halle) in 2007–2011 and a Bronisław Geremek Junior Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM, Vienna) in 2011–2012. Currently she is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences (Warsaw), where she is carrying out research on the relation between ethnic identity and class.

Ksenia Pimenova received a PhD in sociology from the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS, Paris) in 2012 and a Candidate of Science in history from the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow) in 2007. She is affiliated with the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies of Religion (CEIFR) and the Centre for Mongolian and Siberian Studies (CEMS), both in Paris. Her current research interests include the revival of shamanism and Buddhism in Siberia, the globalization of religion, and the relationship between religion and the state in post-Soviet Russia.