Elin Linder is a passionate PhD student who joined the department in September 2019. She holds two BS degrees, one in Textile Development from Fashion Institute of Technology (2013), and one in Social Anthropology from Stockholm University (2016). Prior to starting her PhD studies, she received her MS in Social Anthropology from Stockholm University (2018) with the thesis “Food: A Sensuous matter of the Everyday - A sensorial exploration of material and bounded natures of mundane food practices”. With a curiosity to explore material and bounded natures of food – especially, how such bounded natures become through taken-for-granted notions of what food constitutes and what constitutes it – the thesis sensuously unfolds food practices as everyday lived experience.

Research Interests
Environmental Emergencies, Materiality/Material Culture, Infrastructure, Resource-Making, Boundary-Making, Food Anthropology and Sensuous Scholarship

Research
Following her curiosity exploring human-environment engagements and emergencies, Elin’s research project sets out to survey the interplay between people, material matters, discourses and practices as it unfolds in the world of olivicultura in Puglia, Italy. Intrigued to understand ways in which people relate to the ancient practice of olive cultivation – considering that the heritage thereof is widely rooted in the vibrancy and tradition of people, politics, histories, culture, food and identities of the land – the project, in its initial stage, attends to a range of whys, hows and whats prevalent in the socio-material workings inherent to olive-human ecologies within the region of Puglia. And so, with an immense interest in unsettling occurrences of boundary-making and resource-making, alongside an initial aim to explore how situated branches of knowledge bound material practices to social structures, Elin’s research project inquires ways in which bounded natures advance and are given value through the range of practices and processes involved in olive growing and olive oil production. The study is set in Puglia as the region, with its 60 million olive trees, some of which dates back thousands of years, represents an utmost important area of cultivation – historically, culturally, ecologically and economically.