May - August 2021
Alexandra Coțofană is an anthropologist working in the Social Sciences Department at Zayed University Abu Dhabi. Alexandra’s research explores intersections of political ecologies, modernities, and ontologies of governing. At IASH, Alexandra will be focusing on developing one project that discusses the importance of sentient landscapes for ideations of state futures and state pasts. The project relies on ethnographic and archival research discussing the political motivations behind the Carpathian Mountains as a sentient landscape (a landscape with agency) and its actions. The theoretical intervention of the project is its exploration of the intentionality of sentient landscape as feeding into anti-Semitic, xenophobic state discourses, which is a significantly different take on sentient landscape than what the current literature offers. Alexandra plans to be at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities from 15 May to 10 August 2021, working with David Farrier for his expertise on Anthropocene poetics and deep time; and with Michelle Bastian for her expertise on politics of time and more-than-human communities.