These Expeditioners have joined our OtBT project in the past and we hope to see them return in the future, but they won't be able to join us this year.
Expeditions, Research in Applied Anthropology, Belgium
Expeditions’ general manager and permanent basecamp resident on Gozo, from where she manages all logistics concerning Expeditions’ research and projects on the islands. Since 2012 she was bitten by the summer school virus and kept returning ever since. Her love for the island increased, and in 2016 she decided to follow her heart and reside in Gozo. As a Social Work and Social Policy graduate, she has various research interests, ranging from social work to religion and identity to mealtime ethics. For some years, she specializes in the anthropology of aging, based on her previous job in Belgium for the Center for Gastrology and her volunteering in the Saint Dominic Elderly Home in Victoria, Gozo, which she increased during the recent pandemic.
University of Leuven, Belgium
An a-disciplinary geographer who graduated at the university of Leuven, Belgium and worked at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium and the University of Urbino, Italy. His research interests are in political ecology, with a focus on agro-ecological innovation and land use regulation, and the geographies of diversities (in particular cultural and sexual diversity); he is very keen on methodological issues and discussions, and loves to experiment with graphics in academic research, from boredom-born research meeting droodles to graphic novels as a medium to communicate research findings.
University of Northern British Columbia, Canada
Her interests mainly lie in the impact of war on civilian populations. This includes during war time, but also its long-term impacts on the population. More generally, she enjoys doing research on any topic on the micro-level, so she can hear stories and memories directly from the people impacted the most. Melissa took these interests and applied them to Gozo with a mixture of oral histories and research on tourism. After two summers on the island she had gathered stories on the Second World War and what it was like in the years afterwards, specifically with the rebuilding of the economy and of the British leaving the country. From here she found the importance that tourism played and how it shaped the island and its people.
Cornell University, USA
University of Leuven, Belgium
Most days you can find Abby carrying bread she has made, purchased, or received as a gift from a bakery. She will probably offer you a piece. On Gozo, she studies bakeries as places where families work together and where locals and tourists consume Gozitan culture. She focuses on one family bakery in Nadur, Gozo, as a lens into and as a unique contributor to food culture on the island. She is interested in collaborative research and the limitless possibilities for topics to fruitfully explore in bakeries. After graduating from Cornell University with a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology, Abby joined Expeditions as a student in 2014, and came back as staff to continue her research and work with other students in 2015. Some of her most effective and fun field methods include the process of learning the local language from locals, playing saxophone in the Nadur Band Club, and shaping bread dough at bakeries. She is constantly surprised and excited by how these activities connect her to community and provide opportunities to learn in the field. Abby looks forward to baking and breaking bread, and taking notes, with many more students next summer.
University of Glasgow, United Kingdom
Jennifer graduated from the University of Glasgow and has subsequently completed courses in digital photography at Glasgow City College. She has worked in archive research within The BBC’s Arts department and as a social researcher for the University of Strathclyde.
Jennifer has spent several summers in Gozo researching the uses of public coastal space and can always be found near or in the water. She is continuing to work on projects concerned with local octopus hunting, performance and tixxowja (showing off) in the coastal space and a visual oral history project of Xlendi. She specialises in macro, ethnographic and nature photography and is looking to develop her skills in underwater photography.
University of London, United Kingdom
A Social Anthropologist with interests in the areas of post-communist economics and identity, superstition and collective magical thinking, and material culture. She got her Anthropology degree at Goldsmiths College, University of London.
She is also interested in the creation of symbols through the use of language, especially in relation to minority languages. Another interest is the anthropology of health and disease and the social construction of different illnesses and disorders within different systems of healthcare.
She currently works as an analyst for Publicis Healthcare Communications Group, where she is tasked with understanding and reporting back on patient behaviours and contributing to the creation of strategies for understanding their model and process of decision making.
College of Charleston, USA
English recently graduated from College of Charleston with a B.S. In Anthropology and Environmental Studies. Her passions and studies revolve around travel, people, and the natural environments in which they all intermingle. English attended the summer school first as a student in 2015, and returned a year later to work on staff and continue research in various concepts of sustainability circulating through different lifestyles on the island. English plans to attend graduate school in anthropology within the next two years.
University of Maryland BC, USA
Bryce is a media anthropologist and historian specializing in gender, sound, science, and the State in the British Mediterranean. He enjoys experimenting at the intersections of media technology and methods, and is currently writing a book about listening, masculinity, and media psychology in Gibraltar. His next historical ethnography will examine the entangled social lives of media infrastructure and deafness on the island of Gozo from World War II to the present.
Syracuse University
Amery Sanders (pronouns they/them/theirs or he/him/his) is a first-year master's student in International Relations at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs in Syracuse, NY, with a BA in Anthropology from Vanderbilt University and a keen interest in melding theoretical skills with more hands-on applications. Their academic interests center around embodiment, identity, conflict, gender, and political violence, with a keen focus within transgender issues, disability issues, and human rights activism. In Gozo Amery has spent the last two summers exploring autoethnographic work related to swimming and embodiment. Their outside interests involve poetry, science fiction, sequin embroidery, and animal biology.
Université Libre de Belgique
In Gozo, Kim carries ethnographic research in a small rural community, focusing on perceptions of change, Europe and globalization. His main research interests lie in the anthropology of neoliberalism, ecological systems, postcolonial studies and sustainability. One of Kim's specialities is graphic anthropology. Through his fieldwork and the summer school, he explores and studies the posibillities offered by sketches and drawings as a tool for ethnographic research and social sciences. In Belgium, he works on a project of applied ethnography with the division of Geography at the University of Leuven, and collaborates with various non-profit organizations working on racism studies and mining industries. Kim Graduated with his Master's degree in Anthropology at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB).
Temple University
Her research is predominately focused on anthropology of food, conceptions of national identity, communities as they exist in digital spaces, medical anthropology, and most recently, her research and interests are much more concentrated on analyzing sustainable food systems. Alexa is currently applying to diversified graduate programs grounded in anthropology, yet more focused on aspects of sustainable development, public health, and/or food systems. You can usually find her in the kitchen or fields when in the field!
University College London, United Kingdom
Amanda is currently studying at University College London (UCL). Her research interests include the anthropology of food and power relations embedded on the consumption and production of food. Additionally, she focuses on medical anthropology, anthropology of global health and the multilayered perception of the body. In Gozo she is working on narratives of disease and doing a comparative analyses with Brazil, her home country. During her time at UCL she has prioritized documentary filmmaking.
LMU University, Germany
His research-focus is the interaction between beekeepers and honeybees and their interrelatedness to the natural and social environment. His scientific fields of interest reach from political ecology and human-animal-relationship to entomology and environmental studies. On the methodological level, he is doing research on cooperative research methods at the field school, to encourage the theoretical and practical exchange with students and to develop more sophisticated methods in this field. He studied Social and Cultural Anthropology at the LMU University in Munich where he is doing his PhD on the topic "Apicultural-Knowledge at Change - Ressources, Access and Transmission" at the moment.
University of Michigan, USA
Angelina is an undergrad cultural anthropologist trained at the University of Michigan, with concentrations in Gender Studies and Art History. On Gozo, she researched identity and feminine agency in traditional art across time, and the modern reclamation of lacemaking culture by female crafters. She is particularly interested in identity formation and community building through placemaking art. She teaches art out of Southeast Michigan community centers to youth in socio-economical under-resourced areas. This experience has led her to research and experience how art is a universally accessible means of expression. Future plans are the start of a dual Master in Social Work and Educational studies, with the ambition of a PhD in Social Work and Activism-focused Anthropology.
University of Oklahoma, USA
Jared Wahkinney is a first-year graduate student at the University of Oklahoma. Previous to graduate studies, he has also earned his B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Oklahoma. Currently, he is pursuing his M.A. in Native American Studies with an emphasis in cultural knowledge through projects of food sovereignty and reintroduction of ancestral foods into a diet, and indigenous media. He is a member of the Comanche Nation, and focuses his outlook through film and media through a ‘Comanche lens.’
Millersville University, USA
Steven is a graduate in sociology and anthropology at Millersville University of Pennsylvania. Currently working on his masters in Public Health at Pennsylvania College of Health Sciences in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Besides his studies, Steven works at Lancaster General Hospital as a nurse assistant, phlebotomist and medical interpreter in Spanish. Steven first came to Gozo as a student in 2014 and returned as a staff in 2015 with a two years hiatus, he will attend again in 2018. In Gozo, Steven is studying the micro culture and semantics within the fisherman culture in Xlendi, Mgarr and Marsalforn. Other topics of interest are witchcraft and witch healing in non-Western countries, Puerto Rican history and its interaction with the USA, and Culture of Clowns (yes, there is one). Steven is also well known for his tasty Coquito (Puerto Rican Eggnog) making.
California State University, USA
Trish has degrees in anthropology, with minors in history and music and has dual positions at her home institution; one as the Director and coordinator of the exhibit program in the university library, and the other as an adjunct professor in anthropology. Trish’s interests are varied, and her focus is generally in cultural anthropology. In addition to teaching Anthropology of Religion, Art & Culture, Introduction to Museum Studies, and Museum Practicum at CSUF, she also pursues interests in oral history, ethnomusicology and archival studies. Trish first came to Gozo as a student in 2008, and has returned twice as staff since that time. She is interested in processes within cultural constructs and has conducted participant observations, interviews, and surveys while performing with La Stella Band Club during festa for St. George’s Basilica. Future projects on the horizon include immigration/migration/return migration of Gozitans abroad, symbols in funerary art and funerary rituals or practices.
McGill University, Canada
Jane completed her undergrad in anthropology and sociology at McGill in Montreal, Canada and is currently a studio assistant based in London, England. Her research involves liminal spaces and human-tech relationships. In Gozo, Jane focuses on the subculture that occurs in temporal communities of public transport (principally the buses and bus station). Jane enjoys a good laugh and a cup of coffee but also takes pleasure getting into long discussions about ethnography, gender and sexuality politics, and learning about individuals’ experience of the social world.
University of Ottawa, Canada
Jorge is a PhD candidate working on his dissertation in the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies at the University of Ottawa. Currently based in Cape Town, South Africa, Jorge's current research explores the roles of the visual arts and mechanisms of coloniality on racial-ethnic meaning making for coloured avant-garde artists and the ways said artists express identity through artistic production. Jorge's other research interests include critically examining representations of gender and sexuality on television shows like Will & Grace and RuPaul's Drag Race and the relationship between language and modes of production in societies in transition. On Gozo, Jorge's experiences have led him to analyze social factors that affect and constrain expatriate artists who come to the island as well as to be an all-around sounding board for research ideas, discussions on social theory, and the development of alternative research methods.
Aarhus University, Denmark
Anne T Jensen is born and raised in Odense, Denmark. After a couple of years at the university she changed path and got educated at KaosPilots - a creative business school focused on entrepreneurship, projects, and processes. After graduating, Anne moved to North West Greenland to work in the harsh but beautiful environment above the Arctic Circle. Later she reenrolled at Aarhus University and studied business anthropology. Her master thesis was built on fieldwork conducted in a production company with a majority of international workers. She is now working as a consultant for a not-for-profit sports organization. Her current field of interest ranges from innovation, creativity, and organizations, to filming, podcast creation and to conducting interviews with the use of LEGO®.
University of Stellenbosch, South Africa
Rene is completing her masters in Social Anthropology part-time at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa. Rene’s research deals directly with the perspectives of those who are involved in providing safe and effective abortion care in Cape Town, South Africa. She additionally works in the social science unit at the Desmond Tutu TB Centre (DTTC), which through the linkage of medical research, community work and public policy seeks to promote the prevention of Tuberculosis (TB) and encourage treatment adherence in Cape Town. On Gozo, Rene explored Pentecostalism on a predominantly Catholic island and how Pentecostal faith healing intersected with the church members’ understanding of health and religion.
California Polytechnic University, USA
Rachel holds a bachelor's degree in graphic design but it was in one fateful anthropology class that she was hooked on a different course. She attended the July 2018 session on Gozo and found herself exploring the street artist community at an abandoned hotel. This experience confirmed her passion for anthropology and she has since returned to school to chase her dreams. While she may have wandered from her bachelor's degree she still finds herself drawn to art and artists and how they reflect the culture they are immersed in. Rachel enjoys a serious conversation every now and then, but she can be easily located by following her laughter.
Indiana University of Pennsylvania, USA
Cole graduated from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Arts degree in anthropology, and minors in sustainability studies and philosophy. During his undergraduate work, he conducted ethnographic studies of community development projects, as well as food access and diet habits of university students. As a student at the field school in 2016, he researched Malta and Gozo’s fishing industry, and how it has been affected by governmental policy following Malta’s introduction into the European Union. His research interests include political ecology and medical anthropology, as it relates to environmental sustainability and public health. Cole is applying to graduate programs focused on public health, urban planning, and applied anthropology.
Oberlin College, USA
Erika is a linguistic anthropologist, trained at the University of Michigan and currently an associate professor of anthropology at Oberlin College. Her work, focused on sign languages, explores the flexible, multi-modal nature of communicative practices as well as the social factors that facilitate, limit, and are shaped by that flexibility. Her publications to date center on deaf sociality in Nepal and on transnational sign language literacy practices. In recent years she has launched a new project focusing on sensory strategies employed by Maltese and Gozitan deaf people within and outside of sign language-centered encounters. She is also working toward building a Lingwa tas-Sinjali Maltija (Maltese Sign Language) linguistic corpus. Participation in the fieldschool helps Erika develop her interest in graphic methods, as she finds that the representational affordances and challenges involved in producing drawings of linguistic encounters helps highlight their multi-sensory complexity. She is very fond of her flock of pet chickens.
University of Queensland, Australia.
Julia is an Honours graduate in anthropology and is currently pursuing a PhD. Her honours thesis explored Australian childhood vaccination policies and her upcoming thesis will focus on the home birth movement in Australia. Julia is primarily interested in critical medical anthropology and theories around medicalisation. She attended the field school as a student in 2017 exploring the concept of ageing on Gozo, amongst local born Gozitan and U.K. ex-patriot retirees.
Uppsala University, Sweden
With a BA in Cultural Anthropology from Uppsala University and a Master’s in Journalism from Södertörn University in Stockholm, David is currently a trainee at the European Parliament’s web communication unit in Brussels. Over the last year he has been working as a journalist for two local Swedish newspapers and studied Postcolonial Perspectives on Moving Images at Stockholm University. He first attended the Graphic Anthropology Fieldschool by Expeditions in Xlendi, Gozo in 2016. A bachelor’s thesis on this method and several anthro-visits on ’Gozitan migration’ later, he spent four months in 2017 as a journalist intern for Times of Malta. Carrying a backpack of experiences in anthropology, news journalism and from the EU, his research-aspirations focuses on local discourses for topics such as postcoloniality, migration and bilingual identity. David would like to focus on graphic anthropology when returning to Gozo.
University of North Texas, USA
Nick is a recent graduate from the University of North Texas, where he received his Bachelors in Anthropology. He came to Gozo in the summer of 2018, where he studied how local grocery store owners built rapport with expat suppliers. He will be returning to the University of North Texas to pursue his master’s in applied anthropology with a concentration in business, technology and design. He hopes to apply anthropological methods to better understand how people interact with their surroundings, especially technology. Nick currently works as an intern for a company that facilitates cultural trainings for international businesses. Aside from that, he is interested in food studies, cycling, traveling, and cooking.
Wake Forest University, USA
Fei’s research interests include migration, gender, and mixed-methods, and looking at the influence of culture on the individual. She is currently doing her degree in psychology at Wake Forest University. She also studied at Beijing Normal University, where she worked on gender differences in accepting rape myths in China. Currently, she is doing a project on how gender perception influences the adaptation of Chinese international students in the US. She attended the field school as a participant in 2019, collecting stories of why people leave Malta and then return. You are welcome to join her doing Tai Chi in the morning!
University of Bristol, UK
Rebecca is a graduate of the University of Bristol and a former participant of the OtBT program in 2018. She focussed her research on representations of Gozitan identity in the Il-Hagar museum in Victoria. Rebecca is particularly interested in the anthropology of cultural heritage and pursuing a career in this sector. In her free time, she volunteers as a museum guide and social media content writer at the museums in her hometown in Scotland.
Humboldt State University, USA
As a former student in the field school in the summer of 2018, she explored the cost and value of tourist activities on Gozo. Rachael has an interest in playing videogames for science. For her thesis during her sociocultural anthropology studies at Humboldt State University, she performed a digital ethnography that studied the interpersonal contexts of play in the videogame World of Warcraft. She hopes to enroll at the University of Kent in their Social Anthropology and Conflict program to study divisions and forced displacement among the Roma in Transylvania this fall. Future plans aside, rest assured that you will easily be able to locate Rachael at the nearest ice cream shop. She really loves ice cream.
University of Leuven, Belgium
An a-disciplinary geographer who graduated at the university of Leuven, Belgium and worked at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium and the University of Urbino, Italy. His research interests are in political ecology, with a focus on agro-ecological innovation and land use regulation, and the geographies of diversities (in particular cultural and sexual diversity); he is very keen on methodological issues and discussions, and loves to experiment with graphics in academic research, from boredom-born research meeting droodles to graphic novels as a medium to communicate research findings.
Washington State University, USA
During his time in the OtBT program in 2019, he conducted fieldwork examining how tourism impacts various views and perceptions surrounding Maltese Food in public dining spaces. He is an anthropology student at Washington State University and also works as a site director for a youth non-profit in Washington State. Ray's main interest lies in the food system, foodways, and political economy studies. He is preparing a long term ethnographic fieldwork project surrounding Bangkok's street food vendors in conjunction with recent laws and regulations restricting the vendor's location and numbers.
Al Hussein Technical University, Jordan
With inter-disciplinary/non-disciplinary ambitions that sometimes get her lost but very enthusiastic, some of her main interests are the relationship between migration and exile, and whatever that may bring in the way of sensory nostalgia, memory and a search for home; the arts in anthropology; and food, in all its facets. She was a part of the field school in 2017 where her research focused on the olfactory memory of Gozitans and whether that could be traced geographically. Having lived in Santiago, Chile for longer than she thought she would be, she is currently living in Jordan, which has been summoning her back for quite some time. Gida is now teaching at Al Hussein Technical University in Amman, and dips her fingers, and toes, into other things that may come her way.
Concordia University, Canada
Alashua is in her second year at Concordia University in Montreal, with a joint specialization in Anthropology and Sociology and a minor in Urban Studies. Originally from Iqaluit, Nunavut, she has worked with Public Health and University researchers on topics relating to mental and sexual health in the Canadian Arctic. Alashua first came to Gozo as a student in 2018 and will return as a staff in 2019. As a student, her research focused on the relationship between Maltese economic development and traditional cultural practices such as cheese making and horse carriages. Her current field of interests are community relationships with the environment, food, and development. In free time, she likes to boulder, dogsled, eat chocolate and lie in the sun.
University of Chicago, USA
Zhou first joined Expeditions on Gozo as a student in 2016 and returned as a staff member in 2018. On Gozo, her research focused on West African migrants and how they navigate various statuses of legality or illegality in their everyday life. Zhou's research interest lies in political irony, social memory, and (post)socialism, and she has done fieldwork in underground Protestant congregations in China and a socialist organization in the US. She recently graduated from the MA program in Social Sciences at the University of Chicago. Before turning to anthropology, she had her bachelor's degree in architecture conservation at Tongji University.
Boston University, USA
Having Greek-American roots led Hannah to study Anthropology in the US, and Southeast European studies in Greece. Her work primarily centers on various projects of religious identity, group and boundary maintenance, and narratives of belonging. Hannah first came to Gozo as a student in 2015 and has returned as staff each year since. On the island, she specifically studies storytelling motifs and food production as a consumable symbol of collective identity. You can often find her making fried green tomatoes and zucchini fritters or doing yoga on the roof.
Utah State University, USA
Kylie first attended Off the Beaten Track as a student in 2014 and returned as staff in 2019. She studied anthropology, folklore, and religious studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Utah State University, where her research interests focused on haunted heritage tourism and digital folklore. On Gozo, she researched agrotourism and the built environment. In the future, she is excited to explore the use of abandoned spaces by locals and visitors to the island. Kylie lives in Wisconsin, USA with her fiance and their two cats, Leia and River. She is an avid reader, loves to knit socks, and enjoys experimenting in the kitchen! She spends some of her free time volunteering at the local living history park and working in their archives. She is also a competitive Irish dancer and instructor with the Kinsella Academy of Irish Dance.
University of Oregon, USA
As a former participant in the OtBT program, Ethan began his research on Gozo's fitness industry by studying a 30-year-old gym in the heart of Victoria. In this ongoing project, he is focussing on cultural perceptions of gender, and their influence on gender roles in the gym and general fitness industry. As an anthropology graduate from the University of Oregon, he aims to continue this study upon returning to Gozo.
University of Wales Trinity Saint David, UK
As a previous participant of the Off the Beaten Track program, Carianne has researched water-human-plastic relationships due to her ongoing interest in understanding the changing relationships between humans and the environment. In her spare time, she enjoys belly dance and exploring the local history and mountains of her home, The Brecon Beacons.
University de Magallanes, Chile
Adrian's interests are food, symbols, heritage interpretation, and music. His attendance in the Off The Beaten Track summer school as a participant in 2017 inspired him to refine his ethnographic methods. He spends his spare time listening to metal and rock, as well as playing in Fuerzas Ocultas, a raw death/doom metal act based on Punta Arenas.
Sun Yat-sen University, China
University of Leuven, Belgium
Xin has a fond interest in queer migrants and local/transnational queer activism. She studied at Sun Yat-sen University and did fieldwork in a Sino-Burmese village in Yunnan Province of Southwest China, focusing on local ethnic minority, ethnic tourism, and cross-border marriages. Later, she focused more on the social and ethical aspects of research on curing HIV. Xin engages in LGBTQ+ activism in China. Xin first joined Expeditions in the Graphic Anthropology Field School in 2017, after this she take part in the summerschool as a student, to then join as staff. Her research was on a local LGBT NGO, and she has a great interest in graphic anthropology.
University of Technology Sydney, Australia
Cindy first came to Gozo as a student in 2018 and then returned as staff for the 2019 edition of the field school. Inspired by her research in Gozo on urban spaces, nostalgia, and opinions that can shape contemporary urban development and policies, Cindy started her Masters in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Sydney, Australia. She combines her passion for design and anthropology by working professionally as an architectural designer and strategist. Always happy for a chat, You can find Cindy making snacks for everybody, cooking up her own creations, or walking around sketching.
University of Oregon, USA
Jacob first joined the field school as a student in 2016, working with beekeepers to gain insight into Gozo and Malta’s environmental challenges. Since then, he has returned multiple summers focusing on analyzing national identity to better understand Malta's post-colonial experience and the areas this overlaps with non-human interactions. In 2019, he created the program's optional project Human-animal Dialogue: Anthropological Explorations. Jacob is inspired by moments that make one reconsider methodology. He craves vignettes that come to the dinner table every night among students and staff, and loves listening to the unexpected encounters that refocus research questions. In 2021, Jacob will pursue an anthropology MA at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
American University, USA
Before moving to DC, Sofia spent time backpacking through Eastern Europe, going to school in Southern California, and working in Iowa. Although her degree in Anthropology is interdisciplinary, she focuses her studies on the cultural aspects of human interaction. In 2019, Sofia participated in the summer school, studying heartbreak among the male population on the island of Gozo and the migratory experiences of heartbreak as a whole. In the fall of 2021, Sofia will return to school to study Creative Writing with an emphasis in nonfiction.
McMaster University, Canada
In the summer of 2019, Sabina conducted research in Gozo on the environmental impacts of festa and how perceptions of the celebration differ between Gozitan generations. She is currently studying a combination of anthropology, psychology, neuroscience and behaviour at the McMaster University in Canada. Her research interests in undergrad revolved around suicidology in the post-Soviet context. Sabina is a strong proponent of environmental preservation and is a passionate advocate for animal rights. Come to her for philosophical discussions or to go on an adventure!
University of Oklahoma, USA
Jared Wahkinney is a first-year graduate student at the University of Oklahoma. Previous to graduate studies, he has also earned his B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Oklahoma. Currently, he is pursuing his M.A. in Native American Studies with an emphasis in cultural knowledge through projects of food sovereignty and reintroduction of ancestral foods into a diet, and indigenous media. He is a member of the Comanche Nation, and focuses his outlook through film and media through a ‘Comanche lens.’
Amsterdam University College, Netherlands
Cullen is an artist, educator, researcher, and third culture kid (TCK) with lots of curiosity. Cullen attended the field school in 2017 as a student, and again as a staff in 2018. Cullen’s ethnographic research incorporates digital ethnography, sensory anthropology, affect studies, mixed and experimental modalities, and cultural analysis to consider the experiences and feeling of being alive in this wild world today. During their time on Gozo, Cullen studied the way that scuba diving shapes the senses and perceptions of climate change, as well as subjective mapping as a meaning making archive of our lived world. Although Cullen currently works as an elementary school teacher in Texas, Cullen believes that ethnography provides a mindset for approaching all lived experiences, and that learning and teaching are lifelong modalities that keep us connected and engaged with others in relationships of reciprocity and community. As an avid potter in their spare time, Cullen is excited to spend some time this summer discovering the ceramics world of Gozo through an ethnographic lens.
University of Edinburgh, UK
Verity has been studying Archaeology and Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh and first came to Gozo as a student in the June session of Off the Beaten Track 2022. Her research on village and branch libraries was a great excuse to tour the entire island and get great value out of her bus card while chatting to librarians. She’s currently writing up the results of that research process for two papers. She’s looking forward to returning to Gozo this summer for the views, the food and the rooftop conversations!
University of Bristol, UK
While she was a student in the OtBT summer school on Gozo, in 2019, Maria looked into people's relationship with chocolate and sweets and how people interacted with it. Next to finishing her Master's degree in Anthropology at University of Bristol, she is looking into embodied knowledge of movement and mobility studies, and she wants to understand how people engage with different environments. During her free time, Maria enjoys taking portrait photography, drawing or painting random landscapes, or going for a swim.
Washington State University, USA
With a background in anthropology and geography, Ray is primarily interested in ethnographic research pertaining to food in Europe and Southeast Asia. He first came to Gozo as a participant in the field school in the summer of 2019. on Gozo, he researched the intersection of food, tradition, and tourism at several of Gozo's restaurants. When not in class or conducting fieldwork, Ray enjoys live music, foraging, and reading science fiction.
University of Pittsburgh, USA
Dana first came to the field school in 2018 and studied the many ways animal welfare on the island intersects with colonialism. Now she is finishing her MLIS in archives and records management and her praxis revolves around community archives and subverting the gaps in the archival record. Ethnography and anthropology continue to influence her work as an archivist, encouraging reflexivity and reciprocity when working with community materials. She also enjoys crocheting, books on the history of scientific philosophy, and meeting new people!
University of Leuven, Belgium
Lee is coming to the summer school through a research network on “Solidarity in Diversity” that visited the base camp in Gozo and participated in activities by Expeditions in 2022. Lee has an interest in queer, postcolonial, antiracist and, more broadly speaking, antidiscrimination knowledge and activism. Their current research focusses on the ways activist groups in Flanders apply understandings of intersectionality (the interwovenness of different forms of oppression) in their activist practice. Lee also has a passion for collaborative research methods and horizontal knowledge production. They are looking forward to discussing these approaches with summer school participants. In the free moments, you will likely find Lee at the beach and in the water.
University of São Paulo, Brazil
Marianna participated in the OtBT program as a student in 2022, when she studied the relation between funerary and religious spaces on the island, trying to approach the construction of the idea of 'self' from the intersections of these themes. She studies anthropology at the University of São Paulo, in Brazil, where her research focuses on Visual and Urban Anthropology. Among the study topics of her interest are body, death, social grief, cinema, photography, and cemeteries. In her spare time, she volunteers for animal protection NGOs and cuddles her dog, Magenta.
University of Manchester, UK
Marie participated in the June 2022 session of the OTBT summer school, as part of her doctoral fieldwork in Malta, which she completed in August 2022. Her fieldwork on Gozo focused on the lived experiences of Gozitan grand-mothers in relation to motherhood, reproduction and religion. Her research interests are informed by ideas of reproductive justice and are particularly centred on abortion rights, in Malta and beyond. Marie is looking forward to being back in Gozo and to support many others with their research projects, and to re-connect with research participants. If not found on Barruf talking about reproduction, Marie will likely be found swimming or hiking around beautiful Gozo, reviewing local gelato vans along the way!
University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
Táillte Cooney-Newton is from Galway, Ireland and currently lives in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where she studied Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology. At present, her research interests include queer solidarity movements and methods of building community through queer activism, but the list is ever-growing. She first attended the Off the Beaten Track field school in 2021 and returned as staff in 2022, where she focused her research on bridging the gap between Catholic life and LGBTQIA+ youth identity formation. Táillte enjoys travelling to new places and hiking in new terrain, but while at the field school, she can be found at her happiest discussing positionality and creative research approaches or sharing vignettes from the field until deep into the night.