Project Team

Manuela Ciotti

ANTHROFUTURE Principal Investigator

  • Manuela Ciotti is Professor of the Social and Cultural Anthropology of the Global South at the University of Vienna. She has conducted many years of ethnographic fieldwork and archival research across a range of sites, both physical and digital, in several countries including India, the USA and Italy. Her research addresses questions of inequality, social justice, and representation and cultural production in the Global South.

Karin Zitzewitz

U.S. Senior Partner

  • Karin Zitzewitz is Professor and Chair of the Department of Art History and Archaeology at the University of Maryland. She is the author of 'Infrastructure and Form: The Global Networks of Indian Contemporary Art, 1991-2008' (2022), 'The Art of Secularism: The Cultural Politics of Modernist Art in Contemporary India' (2014) and 'The Perfect Frame', the 2003 memoirs of Mumbai gallerist Kekoo Gandhy.

Sanderien Verstappen

Senior Team Member

  • Sanderien Verstappen is Associate Professor in Social and Cultural Anthropology with a focus on Visual Anthropology at the University of Vienna, and head of the Vienna Visual Anthropology Lab. As a senior team member of ANTHROFUTURE she is responsible for overseeing the projects' Visual Ethnography components, including training of junior researchers in ethnographic filmmaking, co-supervision of filmmaking projects, and curating the ANTHROFUTURE film festival.

Katerine Niedinger

PhD Student

  • Katerine Niedinger holds degrees in Social Anthropology from Stockholm University and the LSE. Her research is grounded in more-than-human and decolonial approaches, focusing on art and craft practices, digital mediation, and art market infrastructures. Her MA dissertation explored these themes through a sensory ethnography of basketry and plant–human relations in Eswatini.

Furqan Faridi

PhD Student

  • Furqan Faridi is a researcher, storyteller and journalist from Kashmir. They work with multimedia, exploring themes of social justice, memory, resistance and culture.

Alexandra Ferra-Ringhofer

Project Assistant

  • Alexandra Ferra-Ringhofer is the project assistant. She graduated from the University of Vienna with a degree in Theatre-, Film- and Media Studies and a combination in Journalism, German Studies and philosophy.

Project Collaborators

Marie-Christine Hartig

ANTHROFUTURE FilmFest Curatorial Team Member

  • Festival director Ethnocineca

Paul Katterl

ANTHROFUTURE FilmFest Technical Assistant

  • Paul Katterl coordinates the Vienna Visual Anthropology Lab and supports the Anthrofuture FilmFest as a technical assistant. He is currently enrolled in the MA program at the department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna.

Sonam Chaturvedi

Research Assistant

  • Sonam is an artist and educator based in New Delhi, India. She did an Interdisciplinary MFA from Shiv Nadar University, Delhi NCR, and is currently teaching there at the MFA programme. Her practice and research is informed by associative thinking, place-making and collaborating; she works across mediums and relational situations.

Board Members

Artist, Writer and Curator with Raqs Media Collective and Co-Founder of Sarai-CSDS, Delhi

Jeebesh Bagchi

Senior Professor of Global Art History, Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies

Monica Juneja

Distinguished Professor of Public Health and Medical Anthropology, University of the Witwatersrand

Lenore Manderson

Distinguished Professor of Anthropology & Director of the Center for Ethnography at University of California, Irvine

George Marcus

Dean and Professor of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University

Parul Mukherji

Silver Professor of Anthropology and Expert in Indigenous Art, New York University

Fred Myers

Artist, Dean of the School of Visual Arts and Design BNU Lahore, UNESCO Chair on Inclusion through Art, Creative Director of Design Summit Lahore

Rashid Rana

Alsdorf Professor of South and Southeast Asian Art History, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Nora Taylor