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Dr. Mascha Gugganig

Research Associate

Innovation Research

Mascha Gugganig’s research interests include (1) knowledge production on the environment, agriculture, and food – from Indigenous (Hawaiian) epistemologies to technoscience; (2) critical public engagement with academic research, science and technology in museums and public spaces; (3) collaborative research, such as through arts-based methods and multimodal ethnography. In her current project, she researches sustainable agriculture at the EU level and in Germany by attending to innovation, technology and experiential knowledge, and how policies, visions, and agricultural practices in turn shape European identity.

Mascha received her PhD in Cultural and Social Anthropology from the University of British Columbia in 2016. She was a Fellow at the Program on Science, Technology & Society at Harvard University (2014 to 2015) and at the Department for Science, Technology & Society at Cornell University (2019), and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Ottawa (2021-2022). Since Spring 2023, she has been an Academic Councillor at the Chair of Life Sciences in Society (Prof. Michael John Gorman) at the University of Munich (LMU), and continues to be a Research Director at the Department of STS at TU Munich.

 

  • Social & cultural anthropology; science & technology studies; anthropology of science & technology; anthropology of education and knowledge; environmental humanities; critical Indigenous Studies, Postcolonial and Feminist Studies
  • Content:
    • diverse forms of expertise on food & agriculture
    • education as transinstitutional practice
    • epistemologies and ontologies of ‘land’ in permaculture, agroecology, agricultural biotechnology, controlled environment agriculture
    • technoscience in global North-South debates
    • island studies
    • urban planning and debates on gentrification
  • Experimental methodology and multimodal anthropology

Journal Articles

Schneider, M., and M. Gugganig. 2021. Saving Bavarian hops in a ‘parallel universe’: lessons on the biopolitics of agricultural labour in Germany during the Corona pandemic. Special issue: More than a Disaster: Creativity in Growing, Distributing, and Accessing Food During COVID-19, Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment. The Journal of Culture & Agriculture 43(2): 85-95. (open access).

Gugganig, M., and N. Klimburg-Witjes. 2021. Island Imaginaries: Introduction to a Special Section. Science as Culture 30(3): 321-341 (open access).

Waller, L., and M. Gugganig. 2021. Re-visioning public engagement with emerging technology: A digital methods experiment on ʻvertical farming.’ Public Understanding of Science 30(5), 588-604.

Gugganig, M. 2021. Hawai‘i as a Laboratory Paradise: Divergent Sociotechnical Island Imaginaries. Science as Culture 30(3): 342-366.

Gugganig, M., and S. Schor. 2020b. Multimodal Ethnography in/of/as Postcards. American Anthropologist122(3): 691-697 (open access).

Gugganig, M., and S. Schor. 2020a. Teaching (with) Postcards: approaches in the classroom, the field, and the community. Teaching Anthropology: a Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 2(9): 56-65 (open access).

Gugganig, M. 2017. The Ethics of Patenting and Genetically Engineering the Relative Hāloa. Special Issue ‘Nature and Ethics,’ Ethnos 82(1): 44-67.

 

Book Chapters

Gugganig, M. and K. Bronson. 2022. Digital Agriculture, and the Promise of Immateriality. In D. Szanto, A. Di Battista, and I. Knezevic (eds.), Food Studies: Matter, Meaning & Movement. Rebus Press & Carleton University Food and Media Hub, pp. 648-664 (open access).

Gugganig, M. and R. Douglas-Jones. 2021. Visual Vignettes. In N. Klimburg-Witjes, N. Pöchhacker, and G.C. Bowker (eds.), Sensing In/Security: Sensors as Security Infrastructures. Manchester: Mattering Press, pp. 215-236 (open access).

  • Vertical Farming und öffentlicher Raum. Conference 100Places:M – Urbane Naturen-Kulturen Entwerfen (Designing urban nature-cultures), TU Munich, October 12
  • Cultivating Engagement with ‘citizens’ and ‘consumers’ – doing a citizen participation forum on vertical farming at EIT Food. EASST (European Association for the Study of Science and Technology), Biannual Meeting, Lancaster, July 28.
  • The Hawaiian Islands: of island biogeography, sustainable future imaginaries, and (other) lived sensibilities. Society for the Social Studies of Science Annual Meeting, Boston, September 2
  • [Re]considering Education in MCTS: civic epistemologies and learnscapes around land, food and agricultural biotechnology on Kauaʻi. 16th Annual Meeting of the Science & Democracy Network, Harvard University, June 30
  • Vancouver [de]constructed: a contested terrain between Chinese Investment, renovicted houses, and un-settling futures. 13th Congress of the International Society for Ethnology & Folklore (SIEF), Göttingen, March 28
  • 2015. MCTS in the Global [South] – the Case of Agricultural Biotechnology in Hawaii, Society for the Social Studies of Science Annual Meeting, Denver, November 12
  • American Anthropology Association [AAA]
  • Canadian Anthropology Society [CASCA]
  • Center for Imaginative Ethnographies [CIE]
  • European Association for the Study of Science and Technology [EASST]
  • Science and Democracy Network [SDN]
  • Society for the Social Studies of Science [4S]
  • 2019-2021. Individual Postdoctoral Research Grant for “Innovating Food, Innovating Europe?” German Research Foundation / DFG – Deutsche Forschungsgesellschaft.
  • 2017-2018. EIT Food (European Institute of Innovation & Technology) Fund for collaborative Communication project “Cultivating Engagement: a citizen participation forum on vertical farming.”
  • 2010-2014. Four-Year-Fellowship for Doctoral Program in Anthropology/UBC
  • Bottom Billion Fieldwork Award for ethnographic research in Hawaiʻi; Non-traditional Research Dissemination Fund for Exhibition “Hawaiʻi beyond the Postcard,” Liu Institute for Global Issues/UBC