Katja Pettinen (PhD) works at the intersection of cultural and linguistic anthropology. Her current research projects examine the nature of embodied learning, consciousness, sensoriality, and violence through the ecological and theoretical framework of Peircean semiotics. She conducts long-term ethnographic work on traditional Japanese martial art (Bujinkan Taijutsu) particularly as the somatic practice is translated and travels from Japan to North America and Europe.
Samuele Poletti‘s doctoral research is focused on the perception(s) of death in the Sinja Valley of Jumla District (Western Nepal), and how this may shed light upon the ways in which people make sense of existence. Besides resorting to the classic instrument of academic writing, he is interested in the possibilities that photography may offer as a complementary means to the ethnographic description, not least by virtue of a communicative immediacy not always possible in the written text. He is member of: Swiss Anthropological Association; American Anthropological Association (AAA); Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies (ANHS); Britain-Nepal Academic Council (BNAC).
Jasmina Polovic is a Ph.D. fellow researcher at the Center for Applied Social Research OU, works in clinical settings, and consults mental health professionals. Jasmina’s research interests involve mental health in changed social realities (post-social-change settings, the Covid-19 epidemic, etc.) and cultural patterning of mental illness. Jasmina specializes in depression, anxiety, and adjustment disorders, burnout, and the narcissistic personalities spectrum.
Dr. Keira Pratt-Boyden is an anthropologist working across projects related to health service improvement and transformation, health experiences and social justice. Her PhD thesis explored modes of listening and ways of being among mental health activists in London as means of healing from mental distress and experiences of conventional biomedical approaches to treatment. Her current project as a postdoctoral researcher explores black adoptee children’s experiences of care in social care settings. Her research and interests in psychological anthropology include mental-health activism, worldbuilding as healing, critical phenomenology, and public and activist/engaged anthropology.