Dr. Rosalie Stolz
CV
Academic Education
Jan 2020
Issue of the doctoral certificate
2012-2017
PhD studies at the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities Cologne and the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Cologne; thesis “Fear the Spirits, Love Each Other. Kinship and Sociality Among the Khmu Yuan of Northern Laos” (full scholarship; fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in northwestern Laos)
2005-2012
MA studies of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Philosophy and Botany at the University of Cologne; MA-thesis (with distinction): Die Klimaethnologie. Kernfragen eines Forschungsbereiches. [Climate Anthropology. Core Issues of an Area of Research]
Recent Academic Positions (since 2019)
since April 2019
Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute of Anthropology, Heidelberg University (third-party funded; paused for the period of the guest lectureship)
10/2020- 09/21
Substitution of the chair of Prof. Dr. Birgitt Röttger-Rössler at the Freie Universität Berlin in teaching (guest lectureship)
2017 – 2019
Lectureships at the Anthropology Departments of the Universities Cologne and Münster
Research
Research interests
Houses, kinship, sociality, animism, exchange, socio-economic change
Area of expertise
Upland northern Laos, mainland Southeast Asia
Current project
Making Aspirations Concrete: The Rise of Concrete Houses and Current Socio-Economic Change in Upland Southeast Asia.
What can we learn from the wide-spread transformations of houses in Southeast Asia and beyond? By taking the house and its transformations as a starting point or “prism”, hitherto unexplored facets and repercussion of socio-economic change can be illuminated, for the house manifests aspirations for development and prosperity in particular intimate ways and is a vital site of future- and world-making projects.
Amidst the dynamic societies of Southeast Asia, lives in Laos are changing particularly rapidly. While the current processes of socio-economic change in Laos have received increasing attention by social scientists, the role of local aspirations and their manifestation in ʻmodernʼ houses is hitherto unexplored. The proposed research aims to take modern houses and the aspirations they encapsulate as a prism through which upland initiatives of socio-economic change can be illuminated. Which aspirations and images of desirable futures are tied to the image of modern houses? In how far reinforce or transform the new materiality of houses, the changes of the construction process, and the social and cosmological dimensions of houses one another?
This project is funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation.
Publications
Peer-review journal articles
2021
Fatherless Children and Listening Spirits: Ritual Technologies of Measuring Kinship and the Rhetorics of Closure Among the Khmu of Northern Laos. Social Analysis 65(4).
2021
(together with Pierre Petit) Emerging Public Spaces in Rural Laos. Civilisations. Revue internationale d’anthropologie et de sciences humaines 69: 171-193
2021
(together with Oliver Tappe) Upland Pioneers – An Introduction. Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale 29(3): 635-650. DOI: 10.1111/1469-8676.13089
2021
‘Before others’: Construction pioneers in the uplands of northwestern Laos. Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale 29(3): 718-732. DOI: 10.1111/1469-8676.13091
2020
By Means of Squirrels and Eggs. Kinship and mutual recognition among the Khmu Yuan of Northern Laos. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory. DOI: 10.1086/709506
2019
Making aspirations concrete? ‘Good houses’ and mockery in upland Laos. Ethnos. DOI: 10.1080/00141844.2019.1696864
2018
'Spirits Follow the Words.' Stories as Spirit Traces among the Khmu of Northern Laos. Social Analysis 62 (3): 109-127. DOI: 10.3167/sa.2018.620306
Monographs
2021
Living Kinship, Fearing Spirits. Sociality among the Khmu of Northern Laos. Copenhagen: NIAS Press. Nominated for the EuroSEAS Social Science Book Prize 2022.
2017
Fear the Spirits, Love Each Other. Kinship and Sociality Among the Khmu Yuan of Northern Laos. Cologne: Unpublished PhD Thesis.
2011
Die Klimaethnologie. Kernfragen eines Forschungsbereiches [Climate Anthropology. Core Issues of an Area of Research]. University of Cologne: Unpublished MA Thesis.
Edited Books
2021
Upland Pioneers: Aspiration, Future-Making and Emerging Elites in Upland Southeast Asia. Special issue in Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale. Co-edited with Oliver Tappe.
2020
Being a Parent in the Field. Implications and Challenges of Accompanied Fieldwork. Bielefeld: Transcript. Co-edited with Fabienne Braukmann, Michaela Haug and Katja Metzmacher.
Book Chapters
2020
Introduction: Being a Parent in the Field. Theoretical and Methodological Implications of Accompanied Fieldwork with the Family. In Being a Parent in the Field. Implications and Challenges of Accompanied Fieldwork edited by Fabienne Braukmann, Michaela Haug, Katja Metzmacher and Rosalie Stolz, Bielefeld: Transcript.
2020
Falling in and out of sync. Relative immersive processes and immersive processes with relatives in a Khmu village. In Being a Parent in the Field. Implications and Challenges of Accompanied Fieldwork edited by Fabienne Braukmann, Michaela Haug, Katja Metzmacher and Rosalie Stolz, Bielefeld: Transcript.
2015
A Few Impression of Doing Fieldwork on Kinship and Sociality Among the Khmu Yuan in Northern Laos. In a.r.t.e.s. Jahrbuch 2014/2015, pp. 106-113.
Selected Talks
“(Un)knowing spirits: Secrecy, stories, and the pitfalls of knowing in upland, northern Laos”, Webinar series Secrecy and Knowledge: Social and Cultural Responses to Secrecy, Newcastle University and the University of Birmingham, UK, 24 Feb 2022 (invited talk).
“Complicating conservation. Innovation, mobile houses and unintentional conservation in upland northwestern Laos”, Anthropology and Conservation, The Royal Anthropological Institute, Virtual Conference, 25-29 Oct 2021 (invited talk).
“Emerging Public Spaces in Rural Laos.”, together with Pierre Petit, Conference of the Project GENEsYs - East Asian Youth: Identities and Practices in Public Spaces, Université Libre de Bruxelles, 25-26 May 2021 (invited talk).
“Pioneering Concrete Houses in Upland Laos.”, Conference The Modern House: Anthropological Perspectives on the Transformation of Vernacular Houses, Heidelberg University, 09-11 March 2021.
“Where there is Forest now. Traces of Past Lives among the Khmu of Upland Laos. invited talk at the Laboratoire d’Anthropologie des Mondes Contemporains, Université libre de Bruxelles, 27 Feb 2020.
“Making Aspirations Concrete? Emerging Cement Houses in a Khmu Village in Upland Northern Laos”, invited lecture as part of the Laos Lectures at the Department of Southeast Asian Studies, University of Bonn, 29 Oct 2019.
“Fatherless Children and Listening Spirits: Ritual Technologies of Measuring Kinship and the Rhetorics of Closure Among the Khmu of Northern Laos.”, Conference of the German Anthropological Association (GAA), Konstanz, 29 Sept -2 Oct 2019.
“Housing Aspirations. Entanglements and Implications of ʻModern Housesʼ and Socio-Economic Change in upland Southeast Asia.”, 11th International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS), Leiden, 16-19 July 2019.
“Good Houses and their Discontents. Entanglements and Implications of Living in ʻModern Houses ʼ and Socio-Economic Change”, 14th Congress of the International Society for Ethnology and Folklore (SIEF2019), Santiago de Compostela, 14-17 April 2019.
“Good Houses and their Discontents. Aspirations, cement and mockery in upland northern Laos”, invited talk at the Departmental Seminar of the Institute of Anthropology, University of Heidelberg, 20 Nov 2018.
“Work in Progress: Aspirations in Upland Southeast Asia”, 15th EASA (European Association of Social Anthropology) Biennial Conference, Stockholm University, 14-17 August 2018.
“Studying Kinship with the Family in Upland Laos”, Conference Family in the Field. Implications and Challenges of Being a Parent in the Field, University of Cologne, 07-09 June 2018.
“Talking Transition. Testing and contesting socio-economic and environmental change in the uplands of northern Laos.”, POLLEN 18, Oslo, 20-22 June 2018.
“Über Eichhörnchen und Eier. Verwandtschaft durch wechselseitige Anerkennung” [About squirrels and eggs. Kinship through mutual recognition], Conference of the German Anthropological Association (GAA), Berlin, 4-7 October 2017
“Looking at Environmental Change through the Lenses of Gender and Sociality: Economic and Environmental Transformations in a Khmu Village in the Lao PDR”, 8th EuroSEAS Conference, Vienna, 11-14 August 2015.
Panel and conference organisation
Panel “Transforming Houses.”, 10th Conference of the European Association for Southeast Asian Studies (EuroSEAS), EHESS Paris, 28. Juni – 1. Juli 2022.
Workshop (together with Oliver Tappe) “The Limits of Meuang as Limits of Negotiation”, Department of Anthropology, University of Heidelberg, 16 May 2022 (hybrid workshop).
Interim conference (together with Viola Thimm) of the regional group Southeast Asia of the German Anthropological Association with the title “Im/Mobilities in Southeast Asia”, Department of Anthropology, University of Heidelberg, 13-14 May 2022 (on-site event).
Panel "Cementing Change? Anthropological Perspectives on Concrete and House Transformations", DGSKA Conference 2021, University of Bremen, 27-30 September 2021, online.
Conference “The Modern House: Anthropological Perspectives on the Transformation of Vernacular Houses”, University of Heidelberg, 11-13 June 2020, co-convened with Jonathan Alderman.
Panel (co-convened with Oliver Tappe) “Upland Pioneers: Future Aspirations, moral imaginaries and emerging religiosities in (mainland) Southeast Asia” at the 10th Conference of the European Association for Southeast Asian Studies (EuroSEAS), Humboldt University Berlin, 10-13 Sept 2019 .
Conference “Family in the Field. Implications and Challenges of Being a Parent in the Field”, University of Cologne, 7-9 June 2018, co-convened with Fabienne Braukmann, Michaela Haug und Katja Metzmacher.
