Jess Auerbach

My research considers class in the Southern Atlantic, and became particularly attentive to perfume during 18 months of recent fieldwork in Angola and Brazil. My doctoral work makes extensive use of poems, images, and Internet ethnography to challenge the conventional boundaries of anthropology.

Having completed my PhD at Stanford in December 2016, in January I became a founding faculty member of the ‘decolonized’ social science program at the African Leadership University in Mauritius (see details here).

My research continues to engage oceans, both the Atlantic and the Indian, as well as university vision and positionality.

I grew up in Durban, South Africa, attended undergraduate at the University of Cape Town, was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford where I studied Forced Migration. I have lived and worked in South Africa, Germany, Mozambique, the United States, Angola, Brazil, Zambia, England, and now Mauritius.