Doctoral Candidate Hongjin Pan

I am a PhD student at HGGS and I am interested in ecological anthropology. I am funded by the GPTS-DAAD programme. In my PhD thesis under the supervision of Prof Dr Guido Sprenger, I am investigating transcultural issues related to extractive industries and green infrastructure. I am investigating the global ecological and political impacts of local extraction as well as the interactions between human and non-human actors in different ontological and cultural frameworks.

In 2022-2023, I spent five months conducting fieldwork in Inner Mongolia, China, investigating large-scale ecological restoration projects for reforestation, focusing on the culture and practice of engineers and the theoretical issues surrounding the production of nature. This theoretical interest also informs my current research.

My academic interests include two main areas: the relationship between human societies and the natural environment and the corresponding social and organisational forms - particularly in relation to infrastructure, political ecology, ontological anthropology, animism and economic anthropology - and the political systems that people form, especially in post-socialist contexts. I also work on methodological issues in anthropology and cross-cultural research, with a particular focus on mixed methods, computational anthropology and agent-based modelling (ABM), with the aim of applying effective approaches in research.