E-mail rstolz0@uni-koeln.deWebsite https://uni-koln.academia.edu/RosalieStolz
Office Hours
by appointment
Rosalie.Stolz@uni-heidelberg.de
Website https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rosalie_Stolz
Winter term 18/19: Rice, Rubber and Cosmetics. Current Ethnographies of Socio-Economic Change in Southeast Asia.
Winter term 18/19: New Perspectives on Kinship and Sociality.
Summer term 2018 Konzepte von Person und Gesellschaft in Südostasien (Concepts of the person and society in Southeast Asia)
Summer term 2017: Reading Ethnography: Potent Landscapes by Catherine Allerton
Winter term 2012/13: New Perspectives of/on Kinship Studies
Various e-learning modules
08/2017 Dissertation: Fear the Spirits, Love Each Other. Kinship and Sociality among the Khmu Yuan of Northern Laos.
02/2014 – 02/2015: Anthropological Fieldwork in Northwestern Laos.
08/2013 – 09/2013: Explorative stay in Northwestern Laos.
04/2013 – 12/2017: Scholarship holder at a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities Cologne.
01/2012: MA (in German Magister) with first class honours.
09/2011: MA-thesis: Die Klimaethnologie. Kernfragen eines Forschungsbereiches. (Climate Anthropology. Core Issues of an Area of Research.)
10/2005 – 03/2012: Studies of Cultural and Social Anthropology, Philosophy and Botany at the University of Cologne.
since 04/2019: Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute of Anthropology, Heidelberg University (funded by Fritz Thyssen Foundation)
since 04/2018: Associate Lecturer at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Cologne.
04/2017 – 09/2017: Associate Lecturer at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Cologne.
04/2013 – 12/2017: Scholarship holder at a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities Cologne.
10/2012 – 03/ 2013: Lectureship at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Cologne.
04/2012 – 01/2014: Graduate assistant, authoring e-learning modules on basic fields of Social and Cultural anthropology.
10/2008 – 12/2010: Student assistant and tutor at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Cologne.
Doctoral scholarship at a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities Cologne
Association for Asian Studies (AAS)
European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA)
European Association of Southeast Asian Studies (EuroSEAS)
International Society for Ethnology and Folklore (SIEF)
Kinship, Sociality, Exchange, Work, Religion, Animism, Socio-economic change, Human-Environment Relations.
Mainland Southeast Asia (especially the uplands of northwestern Laos).
Making Aspirations Concrete: The Rise of Concrete Houses and Current Socio-Economic Change in Upland Southeast Asia.
What can we learn from the wide-spread transformations of houses in Southeast Asia and beyond? By taking the house and its transformations as a starting point or “prism”, hitherto unexplored facets and repercussion of socio-economic change can be illuminated, for the house manifests aspirations for development and prosperity in particular intimate ways and is a vital site of future- and world-making projects.
Amidst the dynamic societies of Southeast Asia, lives in Laos are changing particularly rapidly. While the current processes of socio-economic change in Laos have received increasing attention by social scientists, the role of local aspirations and their manifestation in ʻmodernʼ houses is hitherto unexplored. The proposed research aims to take modern houses and the aspirations they encapsulate as a prism through which upland initiatives of socio-economic change can be illuminated. Which aspirations and images of desirable futures are tied to the image of modern houses? In how far reinforce or transform the new materiality of houses, the changes of the construction process, and the social and cosmological dimensions of houses one another?
This project is funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation.
Concepts and Practices of Kinship and Sociality Among the Khmu Yuan of Northwestern Laos (funded by a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities Cologne); supervisors: Prof. Dr. Martin Rössler, Prof. Dorothea E. Schulz, Ph.D., Jun.-Prof. Dr. Sandra Kurfürst.
In this project local notions and practices of kinship and sociality were studied in 14 months of fieldwork (2013, 2014-2015) in a Khmu Yuan village in northern Laos. The dynamics of kinship in this upland area have, with few exception, not been given ethnographic attention to since the 1970s. As this study shows, the processes involved in this seemingly rigidly structured kinship setting, characterised by features which were of major interest to classical kinship studies such as the institution of houses, patrilineal kin groups and matrilateral cross-cousin marriage, in fact, present us with new avenues of thought in contemporary kinship studies: the reflection of this particular setting allows us, for instance, to illuminate how "given" kin ties are made into actual ties of mutual commitment.
The dissertation resulting from this project was submitted in August 2018. This project was kindly funded by the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities Cologne.
“Where there is Forest now. Traces of Past Lives among the Khmu of Upland Laos. invited talk at the Laboratoire d’Anthropologie des Mondes Contemporains, Université libre de Bruxelles, 27 Feb 2020.
“Making Aspirations Concrete? Emerging Cement Houses in a Khmu Village in Upland Northern Laos”, invited lecture as part of the Laos Lectures at the Department of Southeast Asian Studies, University of Bonn, 29 Oct 2019.
“Fatherless Children and Listening Spirits: Ritual Technologies of Measuring Kinship and the Rhetorics of Closure Among the Khmu of Northern Laos.”, Conference of the German Anthropological Association (GAA), Konstanz, 29 Sept -2 Oct 2019.
Panel (co-convened with Oliver Tappe) “Upland Pioneers: Future Aspirations, moral imaginaries and emerging religiosities in (mainland) Southeast Asia” proposed for the 10th Conference of the European Association for Southeast Asian Studies (EuroSEAS), Humboldt University Berlin, 10-13 Sept 2019
“Good Houses and their Discontents. Entanglements and Implications of Living in ʻModern Houses ʼ and Socio-Economic Change”, 14th Congress of the International Society for Ethnology and Folklore (SIEF2019), Santiago de Compostela, 14-17 April.
“Good Houses and their Discontents. Aspirations, Cement and Mockery in Upland Northern Laos”, invited talk at the Departmental Seminar of the Institute of Anthropology, University of Heidelberg, 20 Nov 2018.
“Work in Progress: Local Aspirations in Upland Southeast Asia”, Conference of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA), Stockholm, 14.-17.08.2018.
Workshop "Feldforschung und Familie. Herausforderungen und Implikationen des Elternseins im Feld." (Fieldwork and Family. Challenges and Implications of Being a Parent in the Field), 7.-9.06.2018, Cologne, co-convened with Fabienne Braukmann, Michaela Haug and Katja Metzmacher
"Talking Transition. Testing and contesting socio-economic and environmental change in the uplands of northern Laos.", 20.-22.06.2018, POLLEN 18, Oslo.
"Über Eichhörnchen und Eier. Verwandtschaft durch wechselseitige Anerkennung" (About squirrels and eggs. Kinship through mutual recognition), 4.-7.10.2017, DGV-Tagung (GAA-Conference), Berlin.
"Looking at Environmental Change through the Lenses of Gender and Sociality: Economic and Environmental Transformations in a Khmu Village in the Lao PDR", 11-14 August 2015 at the 8th EuroSEAS Conference, Vienna.
Forthcoming. Being a Parent in the Field. Implications and Challenges of Accompanied Fieldwork. Bielefeld: Transcript (co-edited with Fabienne Braukmann, Michaela Haug and Katja Metzmacher; alphabetical order of editors)
Forthcoming. Relative Immersion. In Being a Parent in the Field. Implications and Challenges of Accompanied Fieldwork edited by Fabienne Braukmann, Michaela Haug, Katja Metzmacher and Rosalie Stolz. Bielefeld: Transcript
2019. Making aspirations concrete? ‘Good houses’ and mockery in upland Laos. Ethnos. https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2019.1696864 (free eprints available under: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/ZTVASKJFCSNKKWPU3CQN/full?target=10.1080/00141844.2019.1696864)
2018. 'Spirits Follow the Words.' Stories as Spirit Traces among the Khmu of Northern Laos. Social Analysis 62 (3): 109-127. doi:10.3167/sa.2018.620306.
manuscript. "By means of squirrels and eggs. Implications of gifting and mutual recognition among the Khmu of northern Laos."
2017. Fear the Spirits, Love Each Other. Kinship and Sociality Among the Khmu Yuan of Northern Laos. Dissertation. Universität zu Köln.
2015. A Few Impression of Doing Fieldwork on Kinship and Sociality Among the Khmu Yuan in Northern Laos. In: a.r.t.e.s. Jahrbuch, 2014/2015, pp. 106-113.
2011. Die Klimaethnologie. Kernfragen eines Forschungsbereiches. Magisterarbeit. Universität zu Köln. (Climate Anthropology. Core Issues of an Area of Research.)