Ruta Dapkunaite
I am Ruta Dapkunaite, young anthropologist, who has completed MA in Social Anthropology at Vytautas Magnus University, attained the Southern Illinois University Certificate in Intercultural Understanding and currently pursuing PhD in Sociology (with the perspective of anthropology) at Vytautas Magnus University (second year student). The thesis of my doctoral study is focused on the displacement of people through the anthropological perspective. My research interests include the poverty concept in different communities, cultural diversity and differences, consumption and the consumer society, kinship, human rights, migration studies and refugees, technological impact on society, service customization in the sector of the companies, sustainability and business impacts on sustainable development, user experience and design anthropology.
My PhD project will likely to focus on cultural resistance and the migration of refugees and cultural issues of their integration into Lithuanian society. While my PhD project on why there is resistance to immigration, what form it takes and, how it is originated, - is in its beginning phases, I will seek to investigate the phenomenon of cultural resistance of local people and its impact on the integration of refugees and try to develop cultural models of how Lithuanians think about refugees while these models will impact on the ability of them to accept refugees and immigrants as full citizens of the country.