Author: Annika Lems

Annika Lems is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Bern in Switzerland. She was awarded a doctorate in social anthropology from Swinburne University in Melbourne, Australia in late 2013. As part of a project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation she is currently conducting longitudinal ethnographic research into the educational pathways of young unaccompanied asylum seekers in Switzerland. She is particularly interested in shedding light on the ways young people navigate their ways through landscapes of extreme uncertainty and change. The aim is to develop a better understanding of education as a crucial existential strategy in the face of chronic insecurity and crisis. Annika’s monograph Being-Here: Placemaking in a World of Movement will be published with Berghahn in 2018.

Annika Lems

Annika Lems is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Bern in Switzerland. She was awarded a doctorate in social anthropology from Swinburne University in Melbourne, Australia in late 2013. As part of a project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation she is currently conducting longitudinal ethnographic research into the educational pathways of young unaccompanied asylum seekers in Switzerland. She is particularly interested in shedding light on the ways young people navigate their ways through landscapes of extreme uncertainty and change. The aim is to develop a better understanding of education as a crucial existential strategy in the face of chronic insecurity and crisis. Annika’s monograph Being-Here: Placemaking in a World of Movement will be published with Berghahn in 2018.

Displacement Threads

Introduction: Displacement and New Sociabilities

August, 2018 / By Heike Drotbohm and Annika Lems

In this thematic week we aim to think through the notion of displacement. At a time that is marked by […]

Displacement Threads

Shifting Sands – A film by Paul Reade

August, 2018 / By Heike Drotbohm and Annika Lems

Tourism creates and depends on an entanglement of temporary and permanent displacements; at the same time it manipulates and projects

Displacement Threads

On being made feel out of place

August, 2018 / By Annika Lems

Based on the experiences of two young Eritreans who arrived in Switzerland as unaccompanied minors, this article thinks through the

Precarity Threads

How to write about precarity from a precarious position

December, 2017 / By Annika Lems

Let me start with a confession: Throughout the past year or so I have become somewhat hesitant to attend conferences