Lena Kaufmann

Dr.

photo

 lena.kaufmann@unifr.ch
 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3879-1683

Research Associate SNSF
Department of Social Sciences

PER 21 bu. C201
Bd de Pérolles 90
1700 Fribourg
PER 21, C201

Biography

I have been an SNSF Ambizione Fellow at the Department of Social Anthropology since August 2024, where I am leading the research project "Digital agriculture: Sino-European contrasts, correspondences and collaborations". The project explores the challenges and opportunities of digitalising agriculture through the use of drones. I hold a PhD in sociocultural anthropology from the University of Zurich and an MA (Magister Artium) in anthropology and Sinology from Freie Universität Berlin. Before coming to Fribourg, I was a senior researcher and lecturer at the History Department of the University of Zurich and coordinator of the SNSF project "Digital entanglements: discourses and practices around Sino-Swiss fibre optic infrastructures since the 1970s". I have taught anthropology and Chinese studies at the Universities of Zurich and Bern, where my course "Chinese Society in Transition" received an award. I have been a visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and at the University of Konstanz. Moreover, I spent four years in China, including at the Beijing Language and Culture University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

My research focuses on technologies, knowledge and migration in relation to translocal and global China. I have conducted long-term ethnographic fieldwork on Chinese rural-urban migration in rural and urban areas, agriculture, food, work, the Digital Silk Road and Swiss-Chinese entanglements in digital infrastructures. My research has been awarded several major grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Ethnographic Museum at the University of Zurich, and I have been shortlisted for the Mercator Award 2019. I am a dedicated lecturer and author of the book "Rural-Urban Migration and Agro-Technological Change in Post-Reform China" (AUP 2021, open access). Additionally, I serve as the spokesperson of the Regional Group China(s) of the German Anthropological Association.

Collaborating with artists from the fields of augmented reality, photography and museum display, I have actively engaged with wider civil society as part of three exhibitions: “Drinking Skills” (Ethnographic Museum at the University of Zurich, 2014), “The Wired Nation – Landscape, Architecture, Infrastructure” (ETH/Collegium Helveticum, 2020) and “Planet Digital” (Zurich Museum of Design, 2022). An overview of my research output can be found at: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3879-1683. Most of my publications are open access and can be accessed via: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Lena-Kaufmann.

Research and publications