Anthropology Lecture Series

The department of Social and Cultural Anthropology is proud to present its Anthropology Lecture Series.
Every semester, we invite various speakers from in and out of the University of Bayreuth to present exciting topics to students, fellow researchers and everyone else who is interested. Please feel free to join us!

When: every Tuesday at 6.15 p.m.
Where: FZA, S145/146
Accessibility: FZA is wheelchair accessible.

To join via zoom: (coming soon)

Excess

Too much, too fast, too large, too hot, too toxic. Excess is a striking feature of consumption, production, circulation and discard in late capitalist environments. While usually referring to a pathological overflow, excess also emerges at the edges of capitalist systems and institutions as that which resists capture — the leftover, residue, the reused and recycled. This lecture series invites engagements with excess across a wide range of empirical terrains and examines how and where forms of surfeit are produced, justified, desired, or contested. 

14.10.2025 - Please note: Just the Semester Opening will be held in Iwalewahaus, Wölfelstr. 2, Bayreuth
Semester Opening: Introduction of the professors and lecturers (UBT)

21.10.2025
Dr. Harris Solomon (Duke University):
"Glitch Medicine and the Anthropology of Error"

28.10.2025
Dr. George-Paul Meiu (University of Basel):
“Death and the Debris of Desire in Kenya’s Sex Economies” 

04.11.2025     
Dr. Camelia Dewan (University of Uppsala):
“Excess Maritime Toxic Flows: Shipbreaking in coastal Bangladesh” 

11.11.2025     
Dr. Ferdiansyah Thajib (University of Erlangen):
“Gender Pluralism “Gone too Far”: The Making of Sexualized Others in Indonesian Public Discourse”

18.11.2025     
Dr. Mike Degani (University of Cambridge) - something urban/electrics 

25.11.2025      
Dr. Tamar Novick (Technical University Munich):
“Potential Plenty: The History of Urine and Infertility Research in Palestine*Israel” 

02.12.2025     
Dr. Prince Guma (University of Cambridge):
“Resisting Authoritarian Surfeit: Digital Scapes Beyond Capture” 

09.12.2025     
Dr. Sandra Jasper (University of Erlangen): coming soon

16.12.2025      
Dr. Cristobal Bonelli (University of Amsterdam):
“Too Much to Digest: Energetic Gluttony at the Atacama Desert” 

13.01.2026     
Dr. Rita Kesselring (University of St. Gallen) - coming soon 

20.01.2026     
Dr. Lena Kröker (University of Bayreuth):
““Your Network is your Net Worth”: (In)Security of the Kenyan Middle Classes” 

27.01.2026     
Dr. Gregg Mitman and Emmanuelle Roth (Rachel Carson Center (LMU)):
“Visual Tailings: Extraction and the Transmutation of What Remains” 

03.02.2026     
End of semester get-together (students & staff)