University of Helsinki

Department Member, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies

About

Elisabeth L. Engebretsen is a Research Fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki. The working title of the current 2-year research project is Queer Activists and Suburban Residents: Mapping Life on the Beijing Margins, and involves fieldwork in central Beijing city and the suburban district of Tongzhou, and collaborative work with (1) local queer activists and (2) artists.

Previously she was Faculty Lecturer at the Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies; and a Sessional Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology, McGill University (2009-2011); and a Postdoctoral Fellow in Transnational Sexualities in the Women's Studies Program, Duke University, (2008-2009). She holds a PhD in Anthropology from the London School of Economics and Political Science (2008), and completed MSc programs in Social Anthropology (2003) and Gender Studies (2000), also at the London School of Economics.


Publications:

2013. Queer Women in Urban China: An Ethnography. New York: Routledge (under contract; spring 2013)

2012.  “On Urban Anthropology in Contemporary China,” in Italo Pardo and Giuliana Prato (eds.) Anthropology in the City: Methods, Methodology, Theory, Ashgate Publishers, UK (in press)

2012.  Book review: "Backward Glances: Contemporary Chinese Cultures and the Female Homoerotic Imaginary." (Fran Martin, Duke UP 2010), Sexualities 15(2): 245-247

2011.  "Queer 'Guerrilla' Activism in China: Reflections on the 10th Anniversary Beijing Queer Film Festival 2011." On Trikster - Nordic Queer Journal Blog (Oct.10). <http://trikster.net/blog/?p=527&gt;

2011. 中國大陸的酷兒公共文化與政治 (“Queer public cultures and politics in mainland China”), in 《性地圖景：兩岸三地性／別氣候》(Changing Sexual Landscape: The China Turn), 甯應斌 (編) (edited by Yin-Bin Ning). 中央大學性／別研究室 (Chungli: Center for the Study of Sexualities, National Central University), Taiwan. pp. 63-78.

2009. “Intimate Practices, Conjugal Ideals: Affective Ties and Relationship Strategies among Lala (‘lesbian’) Women in Contemporary Beijing.” In Sexuality Research and Social Policy, special issue on ‘Global Perspectives on Same-Sex Sexualities: Desires, Practices, and Identities,’ 6(3): 3-14.

2009.  “Women’s Same-sex Identity and Community Formation in Contemporary Beijing,” Sexuality Research in China, 31(4): 232-48.

2009.  “A Different Public: Salon Culture as Tongzhi Strategy in Contemporary Urban China,” in 足迹一 沙龙时光北京拉拉沙龙项目文则 (Footprints: The History of the Beijing Lesbian Salon vol  2). Beijing: Independent Publishers; pp. 56-74.

2009.    "A Rainbow Anniversary: On the Paradoxes of Lesbian and Gay Life in Contemporary China," NIAS In Focus ‘60th Anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China,’ Nordic Institute for Asian Studies, Copenhagen.
http://infocus.asiaportal.info/2009/10/11/blogsin-focus2009octobera-rainbow-anniversary-on-paradoxes-lesbian-and-gay-life-contemporary-chi/

2008. “Queer Ethnography in Theory and Practice: Reflections on Studying Sexual Globalization and Women’s Queer Activism in Beijing,” The Graduate Journal of Social Sciences (GJSS) special issue on ‘Queer studies: Methodological Approaches’, 5(2): 88-116.

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