Laura McAdam-Otto is a cultural anthropologist whose interests lie on
the transformation of coastal zones. She is the principal investigator
of the project „Making Algae (In)Visible: Tourism, Responsibility and
Governance along the Caribbean Coast of Mexico“, which has been funded
by the German Research Foundation (DFG) since October 2021. The project
analyzes how the emergence of Sargasso algae, which threaten the
integrity of ecosystems and commercial tourism, is addressed along the
Caribbean coast. Part of the project is to examine ethnographically how
governance practices develop in the Anthropocene.
Previously,
she was a lecturer at the Institute for Cultural Anthropology and
European Ethnology at Goethe University (2019–2021); between 2015 to
2019, she has also taught at the University of Bremen, the University of
Vienna, and Humboldt Universität zu Berlin.
Her teaching and
research interests include forced migration studies, transnational
mobility, environmental anthropology, governance, and ethnographic
methods. Among other outlets, she has published in the Anthropological
Journal of European Cultures, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration
Studies, as well as in Migration Letters. Her first book Junge
Geflüchtete an der Grenze. Eine Ethnographie zu Altersaushandlungen
(2020, Campus Verlag) was nominated as a finalist for the Deutsche
Studienpreis (Körber Stiftung) and was awarded the Augsburger Prize for
Intercultural Studies in 2021.
To learn more about Laura McAdam-Otto and her work, please visit her
website
