Dr Silvia Posocco

Overview

Biography

I am a social anthropologist with interdisciplinary research interests in gender and sexuality studies and violence, conflict and genocide studies. I have studied ethnographically insurgent movements in Guatemala, the archives of transnational adoption across sites and temporalities, and most recently, forensic archives, bioinformation and cultures of evidence.

Highlights

• Queering Knowledge: Analytics, Devices and Investments after Marilyn Strathern is awarded the Ruth Benedict Prize 2020

• Field-defying Political Anthropologies

• UCLA Racial Violence Hub, Genocidal Violence in the Americas

Office hours

By appointment.

Qualifications

• PhD Anthropology , University of London (London School of Economics Gender Institute)
• MSc Gender Relations , London School of Economics, University of London
• BA Social Anthropology/Art-Archaeology, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

Web profiles

• Silvia Posocco on Wordpress
• Silvia Posocco on Twitter

Administrative responsibilities

• Programme Director PhD Psychosocial Studies, PhD Sociology and PhD Gender and Sexuality (in Psychosocial Studies)
• Postgraduate Research (PGR) Lead, School of Social Sciences

Professional activities

Editor, Bulletin of Latin American Research (2024-2027). 

Co-editor, Theorizing Ethnography Book Series, Routledge Anthropology

Editorial Board Member, Feminist Anthropology (2019-2022; 2022-2025). 

Editorial Board Member, Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology (2020-2023; 2023-2026). 

Associate Editor, Quaderns de Psicologia

Advisory Board Member, Decolonizing Sexualities Network

Associate Fellow, Sexual Harms and Medical Encounters, SHAME

Advisory Board Member, Association for Research on Childhood and Families (Afin)

Co-Chair, European Network for Queer Anthropology (ENQA, part of EASA, 2020 - 2022)

Professional memberships

• American Anthropological Association (AAA)

• Association of Social Anthropologists of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth (ASA)

• European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA)

• Latin American Studies Association (LASA)

• Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS)

ORCID

0000-0002-2075-1480

Research

Research interests

• Social Anthropology, Social Theory and Cultural Analysis
• Transnational Gender and Sexuality Studies and Theories
• Violence, Conflict and Genocide
• The Anthropology of the State and the Law
• Transnational Adoption Circuits, Documents and Archives
• Forensic Archives, Biorepositories and Bioinformation
• Relations, Subjectivities, Socialities
• Ethnography
• Petén, Guatemala; Tabasco, Quintana Roo, Mexico; London, UK.

Research overview

My first research monograph on histories of violence and socialities of secrecy in Petén, northern Guatemala, was published in January 2014 by Alabama University Press. Secrecy and Insurgency: Socialities and Knowledge Practices in Guatemala deals with the experiences of guerrilla combatants of the Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes (Rebel Armed Forces) in the aftermath of the Peace Accords signed in December 1996 by the Guatemalan government and guerrilla insurgents. The book focuses on 'secrecy' as both sociality and knowledge practice, and demonstrates the relevance of thinking 'gender' in the coalescence of novel objects of analysis in a broad field of contemporary theory. I am committed to long-term, albeit intermittent, ethnographic research in Guatemala. I am currently writing a research monograph, Traces, Remnants, Genocide, on transnational adoption circuits and the traces and remnants of violence, conflict and genocide in the country and the diaspora.

With Adi Kuntsman (MMU) and Jin Haritaworn (Toronto), I edited Queer Necropolitics. With Suhraiya Jivraj (Kent), Sandeep Bakshi (Paris - Diderot) and Paola Bacchetta (UC Berkeley), I coordinated the AHRC-funded Decolonizing Sexualities Research Network until October 2021. Over more than 10 years, we edited Decolonizing Sexualities: Transnational Perspectives, Critical Interventions, a journal special issue on Decolonial Trajectories, curated a blog and organised numerous global events. Queering Knowledge: Analytics, Devices and Investments After Marilyn Strathern - edited with Paul Boyce (Sussex) and EJ Gonzalez-Polledo (Goldsmiths) - was published in 2020. The Cambridge Handbook of the Anthropology of Gender and Sexuality - edited with Cecilia McCallum (Federal University of Bahia) and Martin Fotta (Czech Technical University)- was published in 2023. With Lars Aaberg, Tunay Altay, EJ Gonzalez Polledo, Diwakar Kumar and a terrific group of scholars, we are finalising Queer and Trans Life: Anthropological Futures, a new collection due out in early 2025 (EASA Series, Berghahn). 

With EJ Gonzalez-Polledo, I have been charting transformations in the field of bioinformation. Our collaborative research on forensic archives, biodata and cultures of evidence has been published in numerous journal articles and the edited volume, Bioinformation Worlds and Futures.

Research Centres and Institutes

• Steering Committee Member, Centre for Iberian and Latin American Visual Studies (CILAVS)
• Steering Group until 2020, Birkbeck Institute for Gender and Sexuality Studies
• Member, Centre for Medical and Health Humanities

Research clusters and groups

• Co-founder and former Co-Coordinator, Decolonizing Sexualities Network
• Member, Research Group on Childhood and Families Afin
• Member, Network for Interdisciplinary Research on Reproductive and Parental Policies
• Member, Challenging Research Network

Research projects

Supervision and teaching

Supervision

I welcome enquires from perspective students interested in pursuing research in my areas of expertise. PhD projects I have had the pleasure of supervising include: 

Dr Lorena Fuentes, (Re)Reading the Boundaries and Bodies of Femicide in (Post)War Guatemala, with Prof. Gideon, see the article in Antipode

Dr Erol Saglam, Memory, Identity and Subjectivity in the Case of Romeika-speaking Communities in Trabzon, Turkey, with Prof. Frosh, see the article in Anthropology Today

Dr Matthew McCloskey-Martinez, Reading Resilience, Exploring Non-normative Modes of Writing and Being, with Prof. Hoult, see the piece in JPS

Dr Lemonia Gianniri, ‘Out and about’: a Haptic Exploration of Queer and Feminist archives in Post-dictatorship Greece, with Dr Lewis, UBEL DTP, see the article in JPS

Dr Adeline Moussion, The Domestic in the Violence: Understanding the Experience of Violence beyond Trauma in Contemporary France, with Prof. Bourke and Dr Serisier, SHAME Research Project, see the article in Emotions and Society

Dr Hatty Nestor, Accounting for the Body: Tracing the Re-enactments, Archives and Remains of Ana Mendieta since 1985, with Prof. Frosh, see Bomb Magazine

Dr Eoin Fullam, The Social Life of Mental Health Chatbots, with Prof. Frosh, UBEL DTP

Nadine Chambers, Black and Indigenous Geographies: Archives and Accountability in the Shadow of Canadian Settler Colonialism, with Dr Keenan, see the article

Fernando Lanza Zamanillo, Reclaiming AIDS: Stories of Survivors within a Queer Archive, with Paul Turnbull

Peroline Ainsworth, Learning from Cooperative Pedagogies in Argentina, with Dr Harman, UBEL DTP

Shane Yishuan Day, The Experience of Covid-19 in Taiwan, Principal Supervisor, with Prof. Baraitser and Prof. Wan (Tunghai University)

Lawrence Kilshaw, Conception in Psychoanalysis, with Prof. Frosh

Linda Eniola Olanrewaju Adeyemo, Afro-Spanish identities, belonging and activism in contemporary Spain, with Dr Gidley, UBEL DTP

Jemma Walton, Surrogacy Memoirs, with Dr Halden, see the article in Brief Encounters  

Ariel Rodrigo Arciniega Ponce, Art and Activism: Mexico's Sexual Liberation Movement and the ‘Gay Cultural Circle’, with Dr Polgovsky Ezcurra, CHASE DTP

Teaching

Teaching modules

• Theorising Gender (FDGD009S7)
• Theories and Sites of the Psychosocial (PSSL040S7)
• PhD Psychosocial Research Seminar (SSPA034Z8)
• Power (SSPA073S4)
• Independent Research Module (SSPA085D7)
• Bodies (SSPA101S5)

Publications