Maka Suarez

Assistant Professor (tenure-track)
Image of Maka Suarez
Norwegian version of this page
Phone 22 85 91 08
Mobile phone 41280467
Room 908
Available hours On research leave (Spring 2024)
Username
Visiting address Eilert Sundt's building Moltke Moesvei 31
Postal address P.O.Box 1091 Blindern 0317 OSLO

Academic interests

I am an Assistant Professor at the Department of Social Anthropology. My work moves across economic, political and multimodal anthropology.

About

I’m currently working on my book manuscript, an ethnographic account of predatory financial inclusion of Ecuadorian migrants in Spain and their political engagement to face over-indebtedness. It documents creative forms of social organizing against indebtedness and precarity through detailed ethnographic accounts. It follows Ecuadorian families in Barcelona who helped create the Platform for People Affected by Mortgages—or la PAH for its Spanish acronym—and changed Spain’s political history. My book provides a unique approach to critically engage the financialization of global migration and the potential for real democratic transformation.

I’m also involved in various collaborative research projects on different themes including: the production of knowledge around mental health, transnational pandemic responses, and the potential for digital collaborative platforms.

Courses taught

SOSANT2270 – Contemporary Studies in Kinship and Gender

ANTH4030 – Advanced Anthropological Methods

Background

PhD in Anthropology, Goldsmiths College
MA in Development Studies & Political Economy, International Institute of Social Studies
 
Visiting Professor, Departamento de Espacio y Población (DIEP), Universidad de Cuenca, Ecuador (2021- current)
Member, School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, USA (2021-2022)
Assistant Professor, University of Cuenca, Ecuador (2018-2020)
 
 
 
Tags: Economic Anthropology, Medical Anthropology, Migration, Social Movements, Financialization, Latin America, Spain

Publications

 

Book

In preparation    After Debt: Transnational Household Infrastructures and the Politics of Speculation (solicited by Duke University Press)

Book Chapters

  • Forthcoming 'Academia Unmoored: Postcolonial and Infrastructural Challenges' in Decentralized Knowledge: Essays on Distributed Agencies. Leandro Medina and Sandra Harding (Eds). Duke University Press. (With Kim Fortun, Duygu Kasdogan, and Aalok Khandekar, Angela Okune,).
  • Forthcoming 'Experiences from Covid-19’s frontlines in Southern Ecuador: scenarios of responsive scholarship'. In A Revelatory Pandemic? Social Science and the COVID 19 Pandemic in Latin America. Roberto Barrios & Virginia García (Eds). New York, NY: Berghahn Books. (With Fu-Yu Chang)
  • 2023 'How to Produce Responsive Ethnography of Data'. In An Ethnographic Inventory: Field Devices for Anthropological Inquiry. Tomás Criado & Adolfo Estella (Eds). London: Routledge Books.
  • 2021 'Mejor es venir a protestar: Migración, desempleo y activismo en la PAH de Barcelona'. In 10 año de la PAH. Barcelona: Editorial Bellaterra

Journal Articles (Peer Reviewed)

  • 2021 'Eating Healthy: nutritional knowledge distrust among elderly adults'. Appetite, 165. DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2021.105289 (with María Elissa Torres, Diana Morales, Amy Kuritzky, Victoria Abril and Lorena Encalada)
  • 2020 'The Best Investment of Your Life’: Mortgage Lending and Transnational Care among Ecuadorian Migrant Women in Barcelona, Ethnos, DOI: 10.1080/00141844.2019.1687539
  • 2019 'Objetos desobedientes: escraches y la lucha por la vivienda en la PAH' [Disobedient objects: escraches and the fight for the right to housing at the PAH]. Arbor, 195 (793): a519. DOI: 10.3989/arbor.2019.793n3007
  • 2017 'Debt Revolts: Ecuadorian foreclosed families at the PAH in Barcelona'. Dialectical Anthropology. 41 (3), pp. 263-277. DOI: 10.1007/s10624-017-9455-8
  • 2014 'Social Movements and Buen Vivir: Ecuadorians in the fight for housing in the platform for people affected by mortgages (PAH)'. Revista de Antropología Experimental No. 14, Monográfico: Políticas del Sumak Kawsay, 6:71-89.

Public Intellectual Work

  • 2021 'A ‘Middle Voice’ from the South: A Response to Sharon Traweek’s 2020 Bernal Lecture'. Engaging Science, Technology, & Society 7.2: 81–87 (with Jorge Núñez)
  • https://doi.org/10.17351/ests2021.815
  • 2021 'Decolonial Authorship: The Challenges of Collaboration'. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (JRAI), virtual issue, (with Natalia Buitron, Grégory Deshoulliere and Jorge Núñez).
  • 2020 'Social Mobilizations in Ecuador: From October 19 to COVID-19'. Member Voices, Fieldsights – Cultural Anthropology. November 24 (with Jorge Núñez)
  • 2018 'Forming Mobile Research Teams'. Anthropology News website, July 20, 2018. DOI: 10.1111/AN.932 (with Chris Garces and Jorge Núñez) 

Research Funding

  • 2022-2023 Challenge Group Grant (Center for Global Health Equity, University of Michigan) for ethnographic research on maternal mental health and emotional wellbeing (Co-PI with Gwenyth Lee)
  • 2018-2021 Co-Founder and Researcher at Centre for Interdisciplinary Ethnography, University of Cuenca & FLACSO-Ecuador
  • 2019- 2021 EthnoData – Multimodal analysis platform. Researcher and coordinator of two research projects focus on mixed methods analysis using statistical data and ethnographic analysis. (Co-PI with Jorge Nunez)
  • 2019-2020 Research Development Fund (University of Cuenca), for ethnographic research on the relationship between aging, caring and dietary practices among older adults in the province of Azuay, Ecuador (PI)

Book Reviews

  • 2024 'Unraveling Time: Thirty Years of Ethnography in Cuenca, Ecuador' — By Ann Miles. Anthropos (Expected May/June 2024)
  • 2022 Non-Performing Loans, Non-Performing People: Life and Struggle with Mortgage Debt in Spain' — By Melissa García-Lamarca. Radical Housing Journal. 4(2), pp. 223-225; https://doi.org/10.54825/AJYL5516
  • 2015 'Saskia Sassen (2014) Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy'. — By Saskia Sassen. PopAnth.com

Service

  • 2020-2023 Council Member – Society for Social Studies of Science (4S)
  • 2020-2021 Faculty Mentor for 6S workshop (Society for Social Studies of Science)
  • Suarez, Maka & Núñez, Jorge (2023). How to produce responsive ethnography of data. In Estalella, Adolfo & Sánchez Criado, Tomás (Ed.), An Ethnographic Inventory. Routledge. ISSN 9781003253709. p. 33–43.

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Published Mar. 23, 2022 4:15 PM - Last modified Feb. 12, 2024 10:02 PM