MATERA VINCENZO

Actual role
• Full Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Department of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Mediations, University of Milan, Italy.
• Associate researcher at the MESCLAS. Memória, Espaço e Culturas (Universidade Federal do Recôncavo da Bahia). http://dgp.cnpq.br/dgp/espelhogrupo/5729307127329698
• Professor of Social History of Culture at USI Università della Svizzera Italiana.
• Director of the Centre for Research in Cultural Anthropology - CIRA, Department of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Mediations, University of Milan, Italy.

Previous positions
• Lecturer of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Milano Bicocca (2002-2005).
• Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Milano Bicocca (2005- 2018).
• Full Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Bologna (2018-2021).
• Member of the Advisory Board of the Fondazione Gramsci Emilia-Romagna (2018 – 2023).

Main research interests
• Anthropological Theory and History (anthropological writing, epistemology and production of anthropological knowledge; fieldwork methodology; politics of ethnography; ethnographic research practices).
• Linguistic Anthropology (ethnography of writing, ethnography of communication, ethnography of social media).
• Anthropology of Memory (social practices of cultural construction of the past and strategies of remembering).
• Anthropology of the Contemporary. Social Media.

Research and editorial appointments:
• South Italy (1990-1994).
A research project about cultural production in South Italy. The ways by which cultural government organizations, private associations, publishers worked to product cultural events. This research included also unemployment, local labour, markets, the welfare state, social and cultural networks.
• Indonesia (1993; 1995-1996).
A research project about Toraja people in Soulawesi. Within the frame of the ethnography of speaking, the project focused on code-switching events in a cultural and social context marked by national and global flows.
• Kampala (Uganda, 2003)
A research project about the linguistic strategies of construction of the national identity.
• Italy (Milano, 2006 - 2010)
A research project on the artistic performances in and by migrant artists living in Milan.
• Italy (Milano, 2010- 2013)
A Research project on writers, dancers, painters, musicians and performers from all over the world working in Milan. The project is an ethnographic study of the practices of art in Milan performed by migrant communities and/or migrant artists. How is art accomplished in migration contexts?
• Italy (Milano, 2013)
Scientific coordinator of a research project on the urban network Non Riservato, a cultural and social project aimed to create interconnections between cultural associations based in Milan and citizens, between different urban areas, and between institutions.
• India (2015 – on)
Coordinator of a research project in West Bengal on the synergy between culture and economy as key for the improvement of living conditions and for the revitalization of cultural heritage throughout India
• India (2015 – on)
Coordinator and scientific referent of the Summer School Project “Imparare dal locale. Comunità e popoli tribali dentro la cornice globale” (Learning from the Local. Communities and Tribal People in the Global Frame).
• Member of the PhD program Antropologia culturale e sociale, Dipartimento di scienze umane per la formazione, Milano Bicocca University.
• Editor of the Social Studies Book Series Collana di Studi Sociali (Utet Università).
• Editor of the Book Series Dialoghi (Archetipolibri, Clueb).
• Editor of the Book Series Antropologia della contemporaneità (Ledizioni editore).
• Member of the advisory board of the Book Series collana di Antropologia culturale e sociale fondata da Bernardo Bernardi (Franco Angeli, Milano).
• Member of the advisory board of the Book Series Antropografie, Meti editore (Roma). • Member of the advisory board of the Book Series Biblioteca/Antropologia, Meltemi editore (Milano).
• Member of the advisory board of the journal Antropologia, Milano Bicocca University (Ledizioni editore).
• Member of the advisory board of the journal Etnografia e Ricerca qualitativa, Il Mulino, Bologna.
• Member of the advisory board of the journal RAC. Rivista di antropologia contemporanea, Il Mulino, Bologna.
• Member of the editorial board of the journal Archivio Antropologico del Mediterraneo”, Palermo University.
• Member of the editorial board - Peer-review coordinator – of Glocalism. Journal of Culture, Political and Innovation.
• Member of Reprise and Peer reviewer for several Italian and international academic journals and book series.

Teaching
• Cultural anthropology (BA program) and Linguistic Anthropology (MA program).
• He taught continuously since the academic year 1996-1997 disciplines of the area M-DEA/01 in several Italian and foreign universities. In the academic year 2024-2025:
Teaching of Cultural Anthropology in the Master’s Degree course in Science of Linguistic and Cultural Mediation; Teaching of Linguistic Anthropology in the Master's Degree course in Modern European and American Languages and Literature.
USI - Università della Svizzera italiana, Faculty of Communication, Cultures, Society, teaching of Social History of Culture.

Supervisor and director of several four-year degree theses (at the University of Pavia, IULM University of Milan, University of Milan Bicocca), final reports and master's theses, as well as several PhD theses.
Member of the Board of the PhD program in Cultural and Social Anthropology at the Department of Human Sciences for Education, University of Milan Bicocca.

Main conferences and Seminars
• December 1998: Tell me how you see the world so that I could write it. Words, Texts, Theories in anthropological research, International Meeting of Anthropology: Ethnography. Texts – Objects – Images. Firenze, Museo Nazionale di Antropologia.
• December 2000: Code-switching in modern urban communications, paper at International Seminar on "Localism and globalisation. Cultural differences and educational backgrounds in today’s complex world", Courmayeur Mont Blanc, Aosta Valley, Italy 1-2 December 2000.
• December 2002, paper presented at the International Conference Culture e conflitti (Cultures and Conflicts), a cura del Centro Nazionale di Prevenzione e Difesa sociale e dalla Commissione Nazionale Italiana per l’Unesco.
• April 2003, discussant at the Jack Goody’s Seminar The Taliban, The Bamiyan and us, Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione, Università di Milano Bicocca.
• December 2003, Writing alterity. The other term, paper presented at the International Conference Alterity and the Experience of Limits, Department of History, Bogazici University, Istanbul.
• February 2004, Theories and Models of Language, Interaction and Culture: A Symposium, by Alessandro Duranti, UCLA, Los Angeles.
• March 2004, discussant at the Alessandro Duranti’s Seminar, La cultura del Jazz, Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione, Università di Milano Bicocca.
• 9-13 January 2005, Theoretical Frameworks for an Anthropological Analysis of Border, paper presented at the International Conference Crossing cultures, crossing disciplines, crossing scales, Jerusalem, Van Leer Institute.
• February 2006, discussant at the Ruth Finnegan’s Seminar, Beyond Words: The Multiples ways of Human Interconnections, Dipartimento di Scienze Umane per la Formazione, Università di Milano Bicocca.
• 11-14 june 2006, Can language and communicating have a boundary-marking function? Paper at the International Conference "Borderscapes: Spaces in Conflict / Symbolic Places / Networks of Peace". Università di Trento.
• 18-22 September 2006, Communicating is More than Words. Notes for a Multimodal and Interactive Perspective in The Making of Ethnographic Texts, paper discussed at the Invited Workshop on Ethnographic Writing, EASA International Congress, Bristol, UK (convenor prof. Helena Wulff).
• 19 – 20 March 2007, discussant at the Ulf Hannerz’s Seminar, Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, Facoltà di Scienze della Formazione, Università di Milano Bicocca.
• 15 e 16 October 2007, Modernity is elsewhere: Imagination and Cultural Anthropology, PhD seminar at the Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University.
• 26-29 August 2008, Ljubljana, Slovenia, Convenor of the workshop Enacting Pasts and Futures: Memory, Identity and Imagination; 10th Biennal EASA Conference “Experiencing Diversity and Mutuality”.
• 16 November 2008, discussant at the Salman Natour’s Seminar, Memoria. Voci e narrazioni del popolo palestinese, Università di Milano Bicocca.
• October 2009: Anthropologists and Writers. Seven Notes. Paper presented as Invited Speaker at “The Anthropologist as Writer: training, practice, genres”, 5th Stockholm Anthropology Roundtable.
• November 2009: paper on Antropologia e letteratura, immaginazione e realtà International Congress Li vuci di l’omini. Altre storie, storie nostre. Quattro dialoghi per rappresentare l’esperienza in letteratura e in etnografia. Palermo, Orto Botanico.
• August 2010: Imagined identities. the emergence of modern mimetic subjectivities in global imaginative horizons, relazione all’Easa Conference 2010, Crisis and Imagination, Maynooth, Dublino.
• December 2010, International Seminar by G. D’Agostino (Università di Palermo) e V. Matera (Università di Milano Bicocca), Apology for Anthropology, or the anthropologist’s craft. Partecipano: Ulf Hannerz, Mondher Kilani, Helena Wulff, Antonino Butttitta. Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa – Sala Bianca.
• Marzo 2011: Note sull’antropologia dei sensi, relazione al Convegno “Sinestesie. Le figure retoriche nella vita quotidiana”, UniRoma3, Facoltà di lettere, Dipartimento di Linguistica.
• Marzo 2011, Seminario dottorandi "L'antropologo come scrittore", Dipartimento di Scienze Antropologiche, via Giolitti 21/e, Torino.
• 27-29 October 2011, Se un leone potesse parlare noi non potremmo capirlo, paper presented at the Colloque Internationale Le linguiste et l’anthropologue. Modèles et expériences d’écriture, Centro Studi Italo-Francesi, Roma, Piazza Campitelli 3.
• 4 December 2014, chair at the Seminar Youth, Space and Time. Resistance Throughout
the World, with Carles Feixia (Universidad de Lleyda, Catalunya), Carmen Leccardi
(Università di Milano Bicocca), Pamela Nilan (University of Newcastle, Australia).
• March 2015 paper “La parola rivolta” at the seminar Il Paradigma linguistico del dono, Università di Roma tre, dept. of linguistics.
• June 2016, L’antropologia come sapere “contro intuitivo”, relazione al II Simposio
fiorentino sull’Intelligenza Emotiva, Firenze, 10 e 11 Giugno, Palazzo Vecchio, Sala dei Cinquecento.
• June, 11, 2016, Bergamo, 6th Ethnography and Qualitative Research Conference, Seminar “Esperienza e rappresentazione nella produzione di conoscenze antropologiche”.
• November 26, 2016, Chair of the Panel “etnografia dell’incertezza”, at the Novantesimo
Istat Conference, Department of Economics, Rome University “Sapienza”.
• March 29, 2017, “Che cos’è il dialogo delle culture”, at Robert Schumann Research
Center, Istituto Universitario Europeo, Firenze.
• March 31, 2017, Répondant with Martin Reuf, “Dare senso. La semantica di Lévi-Strauss”, Collegio Superiore, Bologna.
• Novembre 2017, Europa, Migrazioni, Multiculturalismo, relazione presentata alla Fondazione Gramsci, Bologna.
• Settembre 2018, Lecture on Reading Cultural Heritage. Dominant and subordinate cultures in Italy, Dept. of Anthropology - Calcutta University.
• Settembre 2018, PhD Workshop, Building Inter-Cultural Competency: Perspectives from Italy and India, The notion of interdependence in anthropology, Delhi University, Dept of Social Anthropology.
• Maggio 2019, PhD Workshop I Patachitra del West Bengal, Dept of politics, Università di Cagliari.
• Maggio 2019, PhD Workshop Antropologia dei social media. Pensare, comunicare, socializzare, vivere al tempo dei social, Dipartimento di Culture e società. Università di Palermo.
• Gennaio 2020, International Workshop Sea People: Past Memories for Sustainable Futures, Dept. of Cultural Heritage, Università di Bologna (Campus di Ravenna).
• Settembre 2022, Università Di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Dept. of Studi Linguistici e Culturali, Giornata delle Lingue – Dialoghi Sul Non Capirsi: Giornata di Studi Sull'incomprensione Scritta, Orale e Digitale, Il Soggetto Svuotato. Ambiguità, Fraintendimenti, Deresponsabilizzazione Nella Comunicazione On-Line.
• Ottobre 2022, USI – Lugano, Università Della Svizzera Italiana - Facoltà Di Comunicazione, Cultura e Società - Giornata di Studio Effetti Del Contagio: Dominio del Reale e del Simbolico, Relazione dal titolo: Il contagio delle idee. Pratiche sociali, pratiche concettuali, senso comune.
• Aprile 2023, Giornata di Studio La lingua e la cultura. Giorgio Raimondo Cardona, Dipartimento di LLCM, Università Statale di Milano.
• Maggio 2023, Seminario dottorandi interdisciplinare Culture sonore, lingue e letterature, 2. Voce e vocalità, con Corrado Bologna e Lucia Amara, Dipartimento di Lingue, Letterature e Culture straniere, Università di Roma 3.
• Maggio 2023, Introduzione al seminario di Michael Herzfeld, Arcaismo sovversivo: il patrimonio contro lo Stato Nazione, Iulm, Milano.
• Marzo 2024, Il contatto ravvicinato con la diversità culturale tra etnocentrisimi e relativismi, Istituto di Studi italiani, Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano.
• Maggio 2024, Perugia, Collegio della Sapienza Fondazione Onaosi, Seminario L’era e la cultura digitale, Perugia.
• Maggio 2024, Intervento alla conferenza di Michael Herzfeld L’etnografia minacciata, Università IULM, Milano.
• Giugno 2024, Laboratorio Antropologico È ora di cambiare l’aria, con Cittadini per l’aria onlus, Milano.
• Febbraio 2025, Leggere la protesta. Il vano gesticolare della sinistra senza più popolo, relazione al Convegno Sinistre e popoli, Centro Congressi Le Benedettine, Università di Pisa.
• Maggio 2025, Introduzione. L’antropologia al tempo della destra, Giornata di studio. La cultura di destra, Dipartimento di Lingue, Letterature, Culture e Mediazioni, Università Statale di Milano.

Latest Publications

2025, Il “vano gesticolare” della sinistra senza (più) popolo, in RAC. Rivista di Antropologia contemporanea, n. 1, gennaio-giugno 2025, pp. 154-163, Il Mulino.
2025, (and G. D’Agostino), Eds., 2023, Histories of Anthropology. Interactions between Centers and Peripheries in the Making of Anthropological Discourses, Palgrave McMillan.
2024, Sentirsi a Casa. Ospitalità, marginalità, incertezza, in Scuola Ticinese, vol. 2-2024, 5-12.
2024 (con Biscaldi A.), eds., Social media and Politics of Identity, Ledizioni Editore, Milano.
Matera V, 2024, L’antropologia al tempo della destra, Insula Europea, https://www.insulaeuropea.eu/2024/01/29/lantropologia-al-tempo-della-destra/
2023, Pensare, parlare, scrivere, videoscrivere, digitare, in La ricerca folklorica, n. 78.
2023, Il contagio delle idee. Pratiche sociali, pratiche concettuali, senso comune, in ALTRE MODERNITÀ. - ISSN 2035-7680. - 2023: Special issue (2023 Dec), pp. 1-10. [10.54103/2035-7680/22132]
2023 (con G. D’Agostino), Eds., 2023, Histories of Anthropology, Palgrave McMillan.
2022 (con Biscaldi A.), La costruzione della soggettività all’epoca dei social, in Soggettività e social media, RAC – Rivista di Antropologia contemporanea, vol 1, gennaio 2022, Il Mulino, pagg. 5-22.
2021, “Comprendersi con fatica”. Parole, giochi linguistici, ideologie locali e cosmopolitismo, in La ricerca folklorica, 75: 193-206, Grafo editore, Brescia [articolo su rivista di classe A].
2021 [2020], Discussing Cultural Authenticity: The “Patachitra” of West Bengal Between Globalization and Modern Consumer Society, in “GLOCALISM: JOURNAL OF CULTURE, POLITICS AND INNOVATION”, 3: 1-14. Doi: 10.12893/Gjcpi.2020.3.11.
2021 (con Biscaldi A.) Eds., 2021, Ethnography. A Theoretically Oriented Practice, Palgrave McMillan.
2021, Politics within Anthropology, in Matera V., Biscaldi A. (Eds.), Ethnography. A Theoretically Oriented Practice, Palgrave McMillan, pagg. 181-206.
2018 (con D'Agostino G.) Eds., Come il mondo ha cambiato i social media, MILANO, Ledizioni, 2018, pp. 326 (Antropologia della contemporaneità). Opera originale: Autore: Miller D. - Titolo: How the Word Changes Social Media [libro (traduzione)]
2018, We Are All Contemporaries. Time and Cultural Diversity, in: Dusi P.; Moshe T.; Potrandolfo S.;, Understanding Cultural Diversity in Education: Perceptions, Opportunities and Challenges, New York, Nova Publisher, pp. 1 - 22 [capitolo di libro]
2016, Understanding Cultural Diversity. Culture, Cultural Traits and Cultural Changes Between Global and Local Scales, in: Understanding Cultural Traits. A Multidisciplinary Perspective on Cultural Diversity, Berne, Springer International, pp. 21-42.
2014, La Antropología como saber “contra-intuitivo”. El caso de la enfermedad y de las emociones, in CLAROSCURO, 13, pp. 1-15.
2013, Si un lion pouvait parler, nous ne pourrions le comprendre. Mots, jeux linguistiques, idéologies locales et cosmopolitisme, in: Santone L; Molinié G., Entre linguistique et anthropologie. Observations de terrain, modèles d'analyse et expériences d’écriture, Berne, Peter Lang SA, Editions scientifiques internationales, pp. 73 - 97 [capitolo di libro]
2013, Ethnography: experiences, representations, practices for studying cultural diversity, in Matera V (ed.), De-Constructing The Field, Archivio Antropologico Mediterraneo, 15 (2), pp. 9-19.
2012, Il mondo dell’antropologia. Vitalità di una disciplina nel XXI secolo, Il Mulino, Bologna (titolo originale, U. Hannerz, Anthropology's World: Life in a Twenty-First-Century Discipline, Pluto Press, 2010).
2010, con Kontopodis M., Doing Memory, Doing Identity. Politics of the Everyday in Contemporary Global Communities, in Outlines, vol. 2; pp. 1-14.
2008, La modernità è altrove. Immaginazione e antropologia, in Fulvio Carmagnola e Vincenzo Matera (a cura di), Genealogie dell’immaginario, Utet Università, Novara, pp. 135-156.