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I am a socio-cultural anthropologist. My theoretical interests center on materiality and semiotics, with an empirical focus on consumer culture, politics and aesthetics, architecture and urban life, popular culture and the body. Questions of state-market relations, political economy, and historical transformation motivate my work. My fieldwork has focused primarily on state-socialist and post-socialist eastern Europe (especially Hungary), but I have also carried out ethnographic research in the United States.
My current projects: First, on the use of popular commercial genres for ideological projects, for example, using the “Retro” genre for the remaking of national history, or on the emerging phenomenon of commercial brands as iconic of national identity.

Second, on the capitalist service economy, and in particular, the negotiating of hierarchy in commercial settings between service providers and customers. This project also focuses on bodies and embodiment, particularly on affective market-sphere performances and the kinds of optimized bodies they demand, bodies modified through commodified forms of exercise and aesthetic dentistry (perfect teeth). This project is comparative, primarily between sites in the U.S., and Hungary, but western Europe as well (Denmark). One objective is to consider the role of universal dental care in determining aesthetic standards for teeth as marker of social class, one capable of naturalizing class difference.

Ph.D., The University of Chicago, Anthropology, 2005

Associate Professor of Anthropology
Socio-Cultural Subfield Head (2022-24)
Department of Anthropology
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Faculty Associate and former acting director (2015-2016 AY)
Center for Russian and East European Studies (CREES)
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Faculty Associate
Doctoral Program in Anthropology and History
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Faculty Liaison (2019-2020, 2021-23 AYs)
Joint Doctoral Program in Social Work and Anthropology
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

PHOTOS of renovated Socialist Modern buildings and post-socialist Organicist styles in Hungary, 2013

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