Maike Melles
Maike Melles
QUALIFICATIONS
2023 Dr. phil., Social and Cultural Anthropology, Goethe University Frankfurt
2017 M.A., International Studies/Peace and Conflict Research, Goethe University Frankfurt
2015 B.A., Political Science and Economics, Münster University
2012 B.A., German Studies and Social and Cultural Anthropology, Münster University
PRINCIPAL RESEARCH INTERESTS
Landscapes; Environmental Anthropology; Cultural Heritage; Sustainability; Socioecological Transformation; Anthropology of Resources; Moral Economy; Environmental Memory; Southern Europe (Spain); Central Europe (Netherlands)
RESEARCH PROFILE
My research pursues two major strands. My first and ongoing focus on landscapes emerges from my PhD research on the Spanish dehesa. Having conducted more than one year of fieldwork in southern Spain, I am fascinated with the sheer multiplicity of landscapes: They are sites of everyday and ritual practice, have aesthetic value, interact with cultural interests and ideas, provide a source of belonging, are legal spaces with moral and economic charge and as such may reflect historically grown inequalities, become contested as objects of power relations, bundle multiple temporalities, and are constituted by more-than-human relations.
My second research focus has evolved in the context of the RESOURCE project, which studies the frugal use of resources in Czechia and the Netherlands. Through the lens of practices around food waste and drinking water in Dutch households, I seek to find out more about people’s efforts and strategies to avoid waste, and how they perceive and relate to these vital resources in their everyday lives. Another interest lies in the everyday and more institutionalised constructions of waste and of other categories related to resource use, such as freshness and cleanliness.
Journal Articles
2023 Rooting Pigs in a Plural Landscape: Human and Porcine Place-making in the Spanish Dehesa. Etnofoor 35(2): 85-100.
Book Chapters
2024 Iberian Ham: A Landscape Luxury. In: Kitagawa, Keiko – Tumolo, Valentina – Díaz-Zorita Bonilla, Marta (eds.): Beyond Subsistence – Human-Nature Interactions. RessourcenKulturen 26, pp. 131-143. Tübingen: Tübingen University Press.
2023 Making and Growing: The Lives and Deaths of a Tree and a House in the Spanish Dehesa. In: Porr, Martin – Weidtmann, Niels (eds.): One World Anthropology and Beyond. A Multidisciplinary Engagement with the Work of Tim Ingold. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 156-170.
2023 When Humans Meet: Re-evaluating Current Trends in Landscape Anthropology. The Case of the Spanish Dehesa. In: Hennrich, Dirk Michael – Reyes, Paulo – Rozestraten, Artur (eds.): Thinking Landscape. São Paulo: USP Open Books Portal, 66-89.
2022 Landscape Use and Transhumance in the Sierra Morena through the Ages. In: Bartelheim, Martin – Contreras Cortés, Francisco – Hardenberg, Roland (eds.): Landscapes as Resource Assemblages in the Bronze Age of Southern Spain. RessourcenKulturen 17. Tübingen: Tübingen University Press, pp. 109-134. (co-authors Bartelheim, Martin – Carmona Ruiz, María Antonia – Chala-Aldana, Döbereiner – Díaz-Zorita Bonilla, Marta – García Díaz, Jesús – Hardenberg, Roland)
2021 The Representation of the Dehesa Landscape in Spanish Local Museums. In: Bartelheim, Martin – García Sanjuán, Leonardo – Hardenberg, Roland (eds.): Human-made Environments – The Development of Landscapes as Resource Assemblages. RessourcenKulturen 15. Tübingen: Tübingen University Press, pp. 35-51.
Ongoing Projects and Grants
2024–2029 Research on Environmental Sustainability and on the Use of Resources in Central European Households (RESOURCE). Praemium Academiae of the Czech Academy of Sciences (AP2303). Researcher.
Board Memberships
2019–2022 DGSKA (German Association of Social and Cultural Anthropology), co-speaker of the Environmental Anthropology Working Group (AG Umweltethnologie)
External Reviewing
Book Chapter Reviews: Springer VS, Tübingen University Press
Bachelor Thesis Examination: Goethe University Frankfurt
Invited Talks, Public Lectures or Roundtables
2024 January, 26. Roots: Unearthing Race, Landscapes, and Ancestors, webinar organised by Etnofoor and the Dutch Anthropological Association (ABv)
2023 October, 18. Ibérico Pigs between Domestication and Naturalisation, talk organised by the BOAR project, Institute of Ethnology CAS, Prague
2020 February, 10. Complex Resources, Resource Complexes: Prospering Pigs and Shaggy Sheep as Two Faces of the Spanish Dehesa Landscape, Colloquium of the Frobenius Institute for Research in Cultural Anthropology at Goethe University Frankfurt
2018 January, 24. Contextualising Democracy Promotion, Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Tunis
Conference and Workshop Organisation
2021 May, 27-28. Engaging Anthropology for the Future. Workshop of the DGSKA Environmental Anthropology Working Group, online. (co-organisers Dağyeli, Jeanine – Simon, Sandro)
2018 December, 12-13. SFB 1070 ResourceCultures Dialogue with Dan Hicks (University of Oxford), Lecture and Roundtable, Tübingen (co-organisers SFB 1070 Working Group on Plants, Animals, and Substances).
Public Outreach and Online Essays
2023 From original evidence to ordinary epistemes: Authenticating the knowledge we live by, Boasblog Contested knowledge (co-author Dağyeli, Jeanine)
2021 Ethnography among the Multispecies, Environmentalanthropology.com (hosted by the EASA Environment and Anthropology Network)
