I have a PhD in Cultural Anthropology and docentship in Ethnology. The topics of my research have varied a lot. My doctoral dissertation (2006) was about Auroville, a multinational community in South India and its relations with the local Tamil community. My post doctoral project (2006-2009) was about South Korean media culture and information society after which I have studied gambling on the internet and in Macao, mobile communication in India, Western countries in media as well as voting in Indian slums. I also have experience on filmed ethnography. At the moment my main research focus is marriage, gender and politics in The Gambia. Methodologically, I am interested in different forms of ethnographic fieldwork (classical, digital or filmed), media analysis, and research ethics. Theoretically, I have examined the concepts of Orientalism and Occidentalism, banal nationalism and its extension banal Occidentalism, imagined communities and hyperreality. I am the founding member of the Social Media Institute, the director of The West Network, and a member of the Poverty & Development Research Center and Extreme Anthropology Research Network.

poverty & Development Research Center