ASSISTANT PROFESSOR/STUDENT ADVISOR Egor Novikov
Novikov is an Anthropologist and visual artist from Siberia with degrees in philosophy (Diploma, Saint-Petersburg State University) and an MA in social anthropology from CEU, Budapest. His academic interests lie on the intersection of biopolitics, ethics, phenomenology and religion
Doctoral Research
A Dirty Job: International Volunteering in Calcutta.
This research studies voluntary humanitarian work in Calcutta, India from unusual perspective of repulsion and transgression. The work with the abandoned, sick and dying involves close contact with deformed bodies, filth, smells and visions of suffering and decay. It is stressful and rich in senses and meanings. This research looks at the experiential flesh of humanitarian fieldwork underlying the moral discourses of salvation and anti-suffering, and draws parallels between the charity in Calcutta and other spheres of experience, such as mysticism, pilgrimage, tourism, and irregular warfare.
Teaching
- Summer Semester 2024 : Filth, Hygiene and Modernity
- Summer Semester 2024 : Humanitarianism, Charity and Volunteering
- Summer Semester 2023 : Lecturer/Instructor at South Asia Institute Heidelberg, course ‘Digital and Multimedia Research Tools for Anthropologists’
Select Publications
- 2022 Virtue Ethics and Post-Truth’, International Political Anthropology journal, Vol. (15) 2, 161-167,
- 2021 ‘Does Sickness Have a Meaning?’, International Political Anthropology 14(2):125–39.
- 2020. ‘Xenophobic Moods in the Wake of a Pandemic’, Boasblog.
- 2018 ‘Border-Crossing and Walling States in Humanitarian Work in Kolkata’ in “Walling, Boundaries and Liminality: A Political Anthropology of Transformations”, ed. Horvath, Benta and Davison. London: Routledge.