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Dr Silvia Posocco

Positions held:
  • Reader in Social Anthropology, School of Social Sciences
Address

Room 505, 30 Russell Square

Email
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  • Overview

    Overview

    Biography

    I am a social anthropologist with interdisciplinary research interests in gender and sexuality studies and violence, conflict and genocide studies. I have studied ethnographically insurgent movements in Guatemala, the archives of transnational adoption across sites and temporalities, and most recently, forensic archives, bioinformation and cultures of evidence.

    Highlights

    Office hours

    By appointment.

    Qualifications

    • PhD Anthropology , University of London (London School of Economics Gender Institute)
    • MSc Gender Relations , London School of Economics, University of London
    • BA Social Anthropology/Art-Archaeology, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

    Web profiles

    Administrative responsibilities

    • Programme Director PhD Psychosocial Studies, PhD Sociology and PhD Gender and Sexuality (in Psychosocial Studies)
    • Postgraduate Research (PGR) Lead, School of Social Sciences

    Professional activities

    Co-editor, Theorizing Ethnography Book Series, Routledge Anthropology

    Editorial Board Member, Feminist Anthropology (2019-2022; 2022-2025). 

    Editorial Board Member, Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology (2020-2023; 2023-2026). 

    Associate Editor, Quaderns de Psicologia

    Advisory Board Member, Decolonizing Sexualities Network

    Advisory Board Member, Association for Research on Childhood and Families (Afin)

    Associate Fellow, Sexual Harms and Medical Encounters, SHAME

    Advisory Board Member, Loving Attachment: Regulating Danish Love Migration (2017-2021)

    Co-Chair, European Network for Queer Anthropology (ENQA, part of EASA, 2020 - 2022)

    Professional memberships

    • American Anthropological Association (AAA)

    • Association of Social Anthropologists of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth (ASA)

    • European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA)

    • Latin American Studies Association (LASA)

    • Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS)

    ORCID

    0000-0002-2075-1480
  • Research

    Research

    Research interests

    • Social Anthropology, Social Theory and Cultural Analysis
    • Transnational Gender and Sexuality Studies and Theories
    • Violence, Conflict and Genocide
    • The Anthropology of the State and the Law
    • Transnational Adoption Circuits, Documents and Archives
    • Forensic Archives, Biorepositories and Bioinformation
    • Relations, Subjectivities, Socialities
    • Ethnography
    • Petén, Guatemala; Tabasco, Quintana Roo, Mexico; London, UK.

    Research overview

    My first research monograph on histories of violence and socialities of secrecy in Petén, northern Guatemala, was published in January 2014 by Alabama University Press. Secrecy and Insurgency: Socialities and Knowledge Practices in Guatemala deals with the experiences of guerrilla combatants of the Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes (Rebel Armed Forces) in the aftermath of the Peace Accords signed in December 1996 by the Guatemalan government and guerrilla insurgents. The book focuses on 'secrecy' as both sociality and knowledge practice, and demonstrates the relevance of thinking 'gender' in the coalescence of novel objects of analysis in a broad field of contemporary theory. I am committed to long-term, albeit intermittent, ethnographic research in Guatemala. I am currently writing a research monograph, Traces, Remnants, Genocide, on transnational adoption circuits and the traces and remnants of violence, conflict and genocide in the country and the diaspora.

    With Adi Kuntsman (MMU) and Jin Haritaworn (Toronto), I co-edited Queer Necropolitics. With Suhraiya Jivraj (Kent), Sandeep Bakshi (Paris - Diderot) and Paola Bacchetta (UC Berkeley), I coordinated the AHRC-funded Decolonizing Sexualities Research Network until October 2021. Over more than 10 years, we co-edited Decolonizing Sexualities: Transnational Perspectives, Critical Interventions, a journal special issue on Decolonial Trajectories, curated a blog and organised numerous global events. Queering Knowledge: Analytics, Devices and Investments After Marilyn Strathern - co-edited with Paul Boyce (Sussex) and EJ Gonzalez-Polledo (Goldsmiths) - was published in 2020. The Cambridge Handbook of the Anthropology of Gender and Sexuality - co-edited with Cecilia McCallum (Federal University of Bahia) and Martin Fotta (Institute of Ethnology, Czech Technical University)- is forthcoming in 2023. With Lars Aaberg, Tunay Altay, EJ Gonzalez Polledo, Diwakar Kumar and a terrific group of scholars, we have been developing a new volume on queer anthropology. 

    With Dr EJ Gonzalez-Polledo, I have been studying transformations in the field of bioinformation. Our collaborative research on forensic archives, bioinformation and cultures of evidence has been published in numerous journal articles and in a new edited volume, Bioinformation Worlds and Futures.

    Research Centres and Institutes

    Research projects

    Data Worlds and Futures: Archives, Bioinformation and Evidence

    Abstract

    This Wellcome Trust Small Research Grant-funded project led by Dr EJ Gonzalez-Polledo and Dr Silvia Posocco (Birkbeck) explores the relation between bioinformation, infrastructures and evidence in relation to forensic archival practices and data processing.

    As body fragments, tissue samples and DNA sequences are progressively transformed into highly mobile and replicable data, bioinformation, that is, information obtained from or about living organisms, raises urgent questions about the entanglement of (life and) death with the materialities and mechanisms of data worlds. This project explores the relation between bioinformation, infrastructures and evidence through a programme of research activities which will involve experts and practitioners in a research network, and produce a new research agenda through collaborative workshops and anthropological research.

    This project will open up major areas of enquiry that will improve public understandings of evidence intersecting of forensic science, genetic profiling, and algorithmic processing and foster new avenues in bioinformation research, data policy and algorithmic governance in the field of health and wellbeing.

    Funded by
    Wellcome Trust
    Funding type
    Small Grant
    Outcomes

    Gonzalez-Polledo, E.J. and Posocco, Silvia Gonzalez-Polledo, E.J. and Posocco, Silvia, eds. (2021) Bioinformation worlds and futures. Routledge Studies in Anthropology. Routledge. ISBN 9780367409456.

    EJ, Gonzalez-Polledo and Silvia, Posocco (2022) Forensic apophenia: sensing the bioinformation archive. Anthropological Quarterly ISSN 0003-5491. (In Press)

    Gonzalez-Polledo, E.J. and Posocco, Silvia (2021) Archives, promises, values: forensic infrastructures in times of austerity. Critique of Anthropology 41 (1), pp. 3-20. ISSN 0308-275X.

    Gonzalez-Polledo, E.J. and Posocco, Silvia (2021) Arquivos, promessas, valores: Infraestruturas forenses em tempos de austeridade. Lugar Comun 59 (1), pp. 122-166. ISSN 1415-8604.

     

    Person, Substance Bodily Capacity: Transnational Adoption and Surrogacy in Times of Violence and Crisis

    Abstract

    This research project is concerned with understanding the relations between war, conflict, structural violence and crisis, and global shifts in the organization and governance of reproduction, specifically through an analysis of transnational adoption and surrogacy. It aims to identify key features and dynamics linked to the sharp decline in transnational adoptions globally and the parallel rise of transnational surrogacy arrangements, through a study of these dynamics across the Guatemalan/Mexican border.

    As flows of adoptees from Guatemala were brought to a halt in late 2006 with the introduction of legislation restricting adoptions to Guatemalan resident nationals and prohibiting all transnational adoptions, surrogacy arrangements in the neighboring Mexican state of Tabasco grew exponentially. The project sought to understand the simultaneous demise of adoptions and growth in surrogacy as transnational dynamics across multiple borders.

    Funded by
    Wellcome Trust
    Funding amount
    £20000
    Funding type
    ISSF/Wellcome Trust
    Outcomes

    Posocco, Silvia (2022) Harvesting life, mining death: adoption, surrogacy and forensics across borders. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 8 (1), pp. 1-19. ISSN 2380-3312.

    Chivalan Carrillo, M. and Posocco, Silvia (2020) Against extraction in Guatemala: multispecies strategies in vampiric times. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 22 (4), pp. 514-532. ISSN 1369-801X.

     

  • Supervision and teaching

    Supervision and teaching

    Supervision

    Supervisions within Birkbeck:
    7

    I welcome enquires from perspective students who are interested in pursuing research in my areas of expertise. I have had the pleasure of supervising the following PhD projects: 

    Dr Lorena Fuentes, (Re)Reading the Boundaries and Bodies of Femicide in (Post)War Guatemala, with Dr Gideon, see Dr Fuentes' article in Antipode

    Dr Erol Saglam, Memory, Identity and Subjectivity in the Case of Romeika-speaking Communities in Trabzon, Turkey, with Prof. Frosh, see Dr Saglam's article in Anthropology Today

    Dr Matthew Martinez, Reading Resilience, Exploring Non-normative Modes of Writing and Being, with Prof. Hoult, see Dr Martinez's piece in JPS

    Dr Lemonia Gianniri, ‘Out and about’: a haptic exploration of queer and feminist archives in post-dictatorship Greece, with Dr Lewis, see Dr Gianniri's article in JPS

    Adeline Moussion, Violence, The Domestic in the Violence: Understanding Women's Experiences of Violence beyond Trauma in Contemporary France, with Prof. Bourke and Dr Serisier, SHAME Research Project, see Moussion's article in Emotions and Society

    Hatty Nestor, Accounting for the Body: Tracing the Re-enactments, Archives and Remains of Ana Mendieta since 1985, with Prof. Frosh, see Bomb Magazine

    Eoin Fullam, The Social Life of Chatbots, with Prof. Frosh, UBEL DTP

    Nadine Chambers, Black and Indigenous Geographies: Archives and Accountability in the Shadow of Canadian Settler Colonialism, with Dr Keenan, see Chambers' article

    Fernando Lanza Zamanillo, ‘They Are Alive and Well Somewhere’: A Queer Socio-Legal Perspective in Exploring HIV/AIDS Long-Term Survivors, with Dr Turnbull

    Peroline Ainsworth, Learning from Cooperative Pedagogies in Argentina, with Dr Harman, UBEL DTP

    Shane Yishuan Day, Principal Supervisor, with Prof. Baraitser and Prof. Wan (Tunghai University, Taiwan)

    Lawrence Kilshaw, Conception in Psychoanalysis, with Prof. Frosh

    Linda Olanrewaju Adeyemo, Afro-Spanish identities, belonging and activism in contemporary Spain, with Dr Gidley, UBEL DTP

    Jemma Walton, Surrogacy Memoirs, with Dr Halden, see Walton's article in Brief Encounters just out. 

    Current doctoral researchers

    • EOIN FULLAM
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor, onwards
    • JEMMA WALTON
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor, onwards
    • KATARINA NESTOR
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor, onwards
      Title of thesis:
      Accounting for the Body: Tracing the Feminist Archives of Ana Mendieta 1992-2016
    • LINDA OLANREWAJU ADEYEMO
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor, onwards

    Doctoral alumni since 2013-14

    • LEMONIA GIANNIRI
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor,
      Title of thesis:
      “Out and about”: a haptic exploration of queer and feminist archives in post-dictatorship Greece
      Awarded:
      2023
    • EROL SAGLAM
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor,
      Awarded:
      2017

    Teaching

    Teaching modules

    • PhD Psychosocial Research Seminar (SSPA034Z8)
    • Power (SSPA073S4)
    • Independent Research Module (SSPA085D7)
    • Bodies (SSPA101S5)
  • Publications

    Publications

    Article

    Book

    Book Section

    • Posocco, Silvia and McCallum, C. and Fotta, M. (2023) Introduction to the Cambridge Handbook of the Anthropology of Gender and Sexuality. In: McCallum, C. and Posocco, Silvia and Fotta, M. (eds.) Cambridge Handbook of the Anthropology of Gender and Sexuality. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. (In Press)
    • Bakshi, S. and Semmalar, G. and Chivalán Carrillo, M. and Rage, R. and Aryakrishnan, R. and Posocco, Silvia and Jivraj, S. and Bakshi, S. (2022) Decolonial queer knowledges: aesthesis, memory and practice. In: Tate, S.A. and Gutiérrez Rodríguez, E. (eds.) The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Race and Gender. Palgrave. pp. 569-590. ISBN 9783030839468.
    • Gonzalez-Polledo, E.J. and Posocco, Silvia (2021) Bioinformation worlds and futures: Introduction. In: Gonzalez-Polledo, E.J. and Posocco, Silvia (eds.) Bioinformation Worlds and Futures. Routledge Studies in Anthropology. Routledge. ISBN 9780367409456.
    • Posocco, Silvia (2020) Curfew: sensing Post-politics, sensing the Undercommons. In: Mendes, A. and Cocco, G. (eds.) The Work of Lines. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Autografia. pp. 152-164. ISBN 9786555310000.
    • Boyce, P. and Gonzalez-Polledo, E.J. and Posocco, Silvia (2019) Queering knowledge: an introduction. In: Boyce, P. and Gonzalez-Polledo, E.J. and Posocco, Silvia (eds.) Queering Knowledge: Analytics, Devices and Investments After Marilyn Strathern. Theorizing Ethnography: Concept, Context, Critique. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. ISBN 9781138230989.
    • Franklin, S. and Boyce, P. and Gonzalez-Polledo, E.J. and Posocco, Silvia (2019) Conceptuality in relation: Sarah Franklin in conversation with Silvia Posocco, Paul Boyce, and EJ Gonzalez-Polledo. In: Boyce, P. and Gonzalez-Polledo, E.J. and Posocco, Silvia (eds.) Queering Knowledge: Analytics, Devices and Investments After Marilyn Strathern. Theorizing Ethnography: Concept, Context, Critique. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. ISBN 9781138230989.
    • Posocco, Silvia (2019) Postplurality: An Ethnographic Tableau. In: Boyce, P. and Gonzalez-Polledo, E.J. and Posocco, Silvia (eds.) Queering Knowledge: Analytics, Devices and Investments after Marilyn Strathern. Theorizing Ethnography. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. ISBN 9781138230989.
    • Bakshi, S. and Jivraj, S. and Posocco, Silvia (2016) (Decolonizing) the ear of the other: subjectivity, ethics and politics in question. In: Bakshi, S. and Jivraj, S. and Posocco, Silvia (eds.) Decolonizing Sexualities: Transnational Perspectives, Critical Interventions. Oxford, UK: Counterpress.
    • Bakshi, S. and Jivraj, S. and Posocco, Silvia (2016) Introduction - decolonizing sexualities: transnational perspectives, critical interventions. In: Bakshi, S. and Jivraj, S. and Posocco, Silvia (eds.) Decolonizing Sexualities: Transnational Perspectives, Critical Interventions. Oxford, UK: Counterpress.
    • Posocco, Silvia (2016) (Decolonizing) The ear of the other: subjectivity, ethics and politics in question. In: Bakshi, S. and Jivraj, S. and Posocco, Silvia (eds.) Decolonizing Sexualities: Transnational Perspectives, Critical Interventions. Oxford, UK: Counterpress. pp. 249-263. ISBN 9781910761021.
    • Haritaworn, J. and Kuntsman, A. and Posocco, Silvia (2014) Introduction: queer necropolitics. In: Haritaworn, J. and Kuntsman, A. and Posocco, Silvia (eds.) Queer Necropolitics. Social Justice. Oxford, UK: Routledge. pp. 1-28. ISBN 9780415644761.
    • Posocco, Silvia (2014) On the queer necropolitics of transnational adoption in Guatemala. In: Haritaworn, J. and Kuntsman, A. and Posocco, Silvia (eds.) Queer Necropolitics. Social Justice. Oxford, UK: Routledge. pp. 72-90. ISBN 9780415644761.
    • Posocco, Silvia (2012) Gender identity. In: Evans, M. and Williams, C. (eds.) Gender: The Key Concepts. Routledge Key Guides. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. ISBN 9780415669610.
    • Palacios, Margarita and Posocco, Silvia (2011) War and the politics of sexual violence. In: Seidman, S. and Fischer, N. and Meeks, C. (eds.) Introducing the New Sexuality Studies, 2nd Edition. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. ISBN 9780415781251.
    • Posocco, Silvia (2010) Female masculinity. In: Ritzer, G. and Ryan, M. (eds.) Concise Encyclopedia of Sociology. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 9781405185329.
    • Posocco, Silvia (2006) Female masculinity. In: Ritzer, G. (ed.) The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. pp. 1657-1658. ISBN 9781405124331.
    • Posocco, Silvia (2004) Butch. In: Eadie, J. (ed.) Sexuality: The Essential Glossary. Essential Glossary Series. London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 22-24. ISBN 9780340806753.
    • Posocco, Silvia (2004) "Butch", "Stone Butch", Butch/Femme", "Female Masculinity", "Passing", "Packing". In: Eadie, J. (ed.) Sexuality: The Essential Glossary. London, UK: Edward Arnold. ISBN 9780340806753.
    • Posocco, Silvia (2004) Butch/femme. In: Eadie, J. (ed.) Sexuality: The Essential Glossary. Essential Glossary Series. London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 149-149. ISBN 9780340806753.
    • Posocco, Silvia (2004) Female masculinity. In: Eadie, J. (ed.) Sexuality: The Essential Glossary. Essential Glossary Series. London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 152-153. ISBN 9780340806753.
    • Posocco, Silvia (2004) Packing. In: Eadie, J. (ed.) Sexuality: The Essential Glossary. Essential Glossary Series. London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9780340806753.
    • Posocco, Silvia (2004) Passing. In: Eadie, J. (ed.) Sexuality: The Essential Glossary. Essential Glossary Series. London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9780340806753.
    • Posocco, Silvia (2004) Stone butch. In: Eadie, J. (ed.) Sexuality: The Essential Glossary. Essential Glossary Series. London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 67-68. ISBN 9780340806753.

    Editorial

    Monograph