Core team
Philipp Schorch
Philipp Schorch is a professor of Museum Anthropology at LMU Munich. He is also an honorary senior research associate at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge.
Diego Muñoz
Diego Muñoz has a PhD in Social Anthropology, Ethnography and Ethnology from EHESS, France. Since 2005, he has been studying Rapa Nui (Easter Island) from an ethnographic and historical viewpoint.
Gesa Grimme
Gesa Grimme studied Cultural Anthropology, Sociology and History in Göttingen. She has worked on several exhibitions and research projects such as “Discomforting Heritage” at Linden-Museum Stuttgart.
Ira Eue
Ira Cassandra Eue completed her BA in Social and Cultural Anthropology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU Munich) with a thesis related to the anthropology of food and religion in Peru.
Philomena Härdtlein
Philomena Luna Härdtlein completed her BA in Social and Cultural Anthropology at LMU Munich with her autoethnographic thesis on different cross-connections of local Italian artists to the Venice Art Biennale, Italy.
Eliza Encheva-Schorch
Eliza Encheva-Schorch is an editor at LMU Munich and PR officer of the Berlin-based literary publisher duotincta. She holds a master’s degree in English, Spanish and German Literature from LMU.
Affiliated researchers
Safua Akeli Amaama
Safua Akeli Amaama is moving into a new role as head of New Zealand and Pacific Histories and Cultures at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. She has a PhD from the University of Queensland.
Vilsoni Hereniko
Vilsoni Hereniko is a professor, author, playwright and filmmaker at the Academy for Creative Media (University of Hawaiʻi). Originally from Rotuma, he has a PhD from the University of the South Pacific, Fiji.
Noelle M.K.Y. Kahanu
Noelle M.K.Y. Kahanu is a fifteen-year veteran of the Bishop Museum in Honolulu. She has a law degree from the University of Hawaiʻi, where she currently serves as an assistant specialist in Public Humanities and Native Hawaiian Programs.
Cristián Moreno Pakarati
Cristián Moreno Pakarati is a Rapanui historian who completed undergraduate studies at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago. He has authored or co-authored two dozen articles and books about Rapa Nui and its history.
Katrina Talei Igglesden
Katrina Talei Igglesden is of Fijian ancestry and has a PhD from the University of East Anglia. She is interested in collaborative anthropology and reconnecting diasporic communities with their cultural heritage housed in museum collections.
Nicholas Thomas
Nicholas Thomas has been director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge since 2006, and has curated extensively, often in collaboration with contemporary artists.
Ida Yoshinaga
Alternative and ethnic media scholar Ida Yoshinaga studies diversity in content, and equity in production, for “scripted” mass-media audiovisual narratives, via the formal tools of science fiction and fantasy genre studies.
Affiliated PhD students
Diana Gabler
Diana Gabler is an objects conservator. Since 2013, she has been specializing in the care and treatment of so-called ethnographic materials in museums such as the National Museum of the American Indian.
Gabriel Schimmeroth
Gabriel Schimmeroth is a curator and project coordinator at the Museum am Rothenbaum – Kulturen und Künste der Welt in Hamburg. He is responsible for the project “Zwischenraum – A Space Between”.