Anthropologist with interest in maritime territorialisation, militarisation of oceans and seas, human security, markets and historical anthropology.
After her PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology / Martin Luther University (Halle, Germany – 2011) which focused on religion and politics in Vietnam, Edyta did ethnographic research on Chinese and Vietnamese fisheries and militia in the common maritime space of the South China Sea. Bridging different historical periods and countries, the question of mobility, migration and connectivity of fishers compelled her to historicize fishing communities and to work in relation to and beyond the nation-state, security concerns and territorially bounded fisheries. By combining anthropology, political science, economy and history Edyta seeks to contribute to the wider discussion on globalizing fisheries, maritime enclosures and marine ecologies in past and present.
In the last ten years, Edyta’s research has been funded by various institutions such as Academia Sinica, Berlin Forum Transregionale Studien, Marie-Curie Sklodowska Actions – European Commission, the Danish Research Council for Independent Research, the British Economic and Social Research Council, the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme and, more recently, by the European Research Council. Edyta’s newly awarded European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant project Transoceanic Fishers: Multiple Mobilities in and out of the South China Sea (TransOcean) at Chr. Michelsen Institute expands her geographic field beyond Vietnam and China to include other global regions in Oceania and West and East Africa.