Dr. Sarah May

CV

Dr. Sarah May is a cultural anthropologist. Based on ethnographic research she realizes cultural analyses within economic and political fields. Her focus lies on the study of material culture in its everyday dimension.

In her habilitation project, Sarah May explores the collaborative field of "wood + crafts" as a dispositif of an ecological-economic transformation process. Facing the mechanization and digitalization in the woodworking crafts, the increasing public interest in the renewable material wood, related innovations and growing political support, she aims to understand practices, knowledge and interpretations of the actors on a micro level.

With the sub-project "Going digital in the woodworking crafts" she was a Junior Fellow at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS) in 2021/22. From 2021 to 2024 she leads the project "Bioeconomy as Cultural Transformation", funded by the Baden-Württemberg Foundation, and in 2022/23 a research project with BA-students on Bioeconomy an Agriculture, funded by the Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre.

Sarah May works at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology at University of Freiburg. She studied cultural anthropology, rhetoric, italianistics and media studies at the Universities of Tübingen, Pisa and Perugia. In 2015, she did her doctorate in cultural anthropology at University of Tübingen with an ethnographic research on the local implementation of EU regulations in the area of culinary heritage/cultural property.

Publiktionen (Auswahl)

• 2023: Ökologisch bauen? Knappheit als konstitutives Moment der Bioökonomie. In: Cornelia Kühn (Hg.): Gemeinwohlorientiert, ökologisch, sozial. Aushandlungen um alternative Wirtschaftspraktiken in der Zivilgesellschaft. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Reihe: Bürgergesellschaft und Demokratie, 115-138.
• 2022: Labelling local wood. On the valorization of regionality and sustainability in timber trade. In: Acta Geographica Slovenica Vol. 62 No. 2, 87-99.
• 2021: Materielle Kultur und politische Steuerung. Konstellationen der Zukunftsgestaltung am Beispiel bioökonomischer Bestrebungen im Holzbau. In: Lukas Fehr, Reinhard Johler (ed.): Bioökonomie(n). Ethnografische Forschungszugänge und Felder. Tübingen: TVV, 77-105.
• 2020: Digitale Arbeitskulturen. Rahmungen, Effekte, Herausforderungen. Berliner Blätter 82 (open access); ed. with Dennis Eckhardt, Martina Röthl, Roman Tischberger). Berlin.
• 2020: Kultur. In: Timo Heimerdinger, Markus Tauschek (ed.): Kulturtheoretisch argumentieren. Ein Arbeitsbuch. Münster/New York: utb, 237-270.
• 2019: Handelsnetz Holz. Transformationsprozesse im Interessensfeld Holz und Handwerk. In: Karl Braun et al. (ed.): Wirtschaften. Kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven. Marburg: MAKUFEE, 634-644.
• 2018: Wood. Regarding economies and policies through the eyes of a cultural anthropologist. In: Journal of European Ethnology and Cultural Analyses (JEECA) 2018, 3 (2), 193-214.

YAS-Projekt

• Graphic Novel on the Environmental Crises (with Lea Breitsprecher, Cristina Espinosa, Javier Francisco, Matthias Kranke and Ida Wallin)

Weitere Projekte & Förderungen

• "Bioökonomie als kulturelle Transformation" financed by the Baden-Württemberg Foundation (2021-24)

• "How to learn making violins" Foto-Ethnografy & Citizen Science, partly financed by the Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft Freiburg (2022-24)

• "Bioökonomie ins Bild rücken. Photovoice als innovative Methode des Forschenden Lernens in der Kulturanthropologie" financed by the Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre (2022-23)