Publications

Elena Sischarenco

I joined the department in January 2022 as a Postdoctoral researcher in the PRIMA-project «Urban Bricolage. Mining, Designing and Constructing with Reused Building Materials» funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

At the intersection of anthropology and architecture, the project investigates the everyday resistances when handling reused materials in selected European countries to optimize the circular economy of building construction. The project enquires into the practical problems that scrap dealers, middlemen, architects, engineers, digital experts, company owners, and carpenters face when working with reused materials. My ethnographic fieldwork is based in the North of Italy with demolition companies.

I have a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the University of St Andrews (UK, 2017). My Ph.D. research was carried out with the entrepreneurs of the construction business in Lombardy (Northern Italy). I worked in various interdisciplinary projects, and I carried out ethnographic research in different businesses (3D printing, automotive, medical, construction, industrial manufacturing).

Research themes:
business anthropology, innovation, knowledge exchange, entrepreneurialism, business ethics, trust, identity, economic vulnerability, risk, informal relations, ethnography of Italy and Europe.