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
Semester Opening: Introduction of the professors and lecturers (UBT)
Please note: Just the Semester Opening will be held in Iwalewahaus, Wölfelstr. 2, Bayreuth
21.10.2025
Harris Solomon (Duke University):
"Glitch Medicine and the Anthropology of Error"
28.10.2025
George-Paul Meiu (University of Basel):
“Death and the Debris of Desire in Kenya’s Sex Economies”
04.11.2025
Camelia Dewan (University of Uppsala):
“Excess Maritime Toxic Flows: Shipbreaking in coastal Bangladesh”
11.11.2025
Ferdiansyah Thajib (University of Erlangen):
“Gender Pluralism “Gone too Far”: The Making of Sexualized Others in Indonesian Public Discourse”
18.11.2025
Michael Degani (University of Cambridge):
"Sister Services: Moral Economies of Electricity Before and Beyond the State in Rural Tanzania"
25.11.2025
Tamar Novick (Technical University Munich):
“Potential Plenty: The History of Urine and Infertility Research in Palestine*Israel”
02.12.2025
Prince Guma (Centre of African Studies, University of Cambridge):
“Resisting Authoritarian Surfeit: Digital Scapes Beyond Capture”
09.12.2025
Sandra Jasper (University of Erlangen): coming soon
16.12.2025
Cristobal Bonelli (University of Amsterdam):
“Too Much to Digest: Energetic Gluttony at the Atacama Desert”
13.01.2026
Rita Kesselring (University of St. Gallen):
"Excess seen through the global lens: Zambian copper and Swiss commodity trading"
20.01.2026
Lena Kroeker (University of Bayreuth):
““Your Network is your Net Worth”: (In)Security of the Kenyan Middle Classes”
27.01.2026
Emmanuelle Roth and Gregg Mitman (Rachel Carson Center (LMU)):
“Visual Tailings: Excess and Nostalgia in the Mining of Mount Nimba, Liberia”
03.02.2026
End of semester get-together (students & staff)