Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies
Finland
fellow
Andrew Graan
Home institution
University of Helsinki
Country of origin (home institution)
Finland
Discipline(s)
Anthropology and ethnology
Theme(s)
Cultural Studies
Democracy, Citizenship, Governance
Fellowship dates
›
Biography
Andrew Graan is a Core Fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. A cultural and linguistic anthropologist, he earned his PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago in 2010. His research examines project making, the politics of publics spheres, international intervention, and the political history of North Macedonia. He has taught anthropology at the University of Helsinki, the University of Virginia, Wake Forest University, the University of Chicago and Columbia College Chicago. He has published his research in Cultural Anthropology, Signs & Society, The Journal of Cultural Economy, The Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Slavic Review, and HAU, among other places.
Research Project
Project Lessons: An Inquiry into the Past, Present and Future of the Project Form
Projects, as a social form, constitute a versatile, portable organizational structure predicated on managed progress toward a pre-determined goal. Despite their ubiquity, the project form – the very model of a project as a distinct type of goal-oriented and managed action – remains underexamined in current scholarship. Project Lessons thus convenes a critical exploration into the past, present and future of the project form, investigating how the norms, practices and expectations of project making have shaped historical formations, contemporary social environments, and our understanding of them.
Research Interests:
Project making and the project form; publics and the publics sphere; language and political economy; nation branding and neoliberal governance; fake news and disinformation; international intervention; diplomats and diplomacy; North Macedonia, the Balkans and the European Union