Introduction: For an Ethnographic Microhistory Through Ruins (2025)

Haunting Ruins. Ethnographies of Ruination and Decay

Edited by Valentina Gamberi and Chiara Calzana, 2025

Ruins, rubble and decaying material can foster a more layered theory of time, change and memory. The seven ethnographic case studies in Haunting Ruins trace human engagements with the temporal forces of ruins, which can trace the past and transform the present. Conjuring environmental humanities, the anthropology of history, memory and archaeology, this book delves into the complex influence of the past on the present and the future and urges scholars to consider ruins as things to think with.

Introduction: Afterlives in Objects

Introduction: Material Afterlives, 2022

In this introduction to our edited volume, Material Afterlives, we specify the interventions and arguments of our collection as a whole. To begin, we reflect on the recent proliferation of "afterlives" as a concept and metaphor within the social sciences and humanities, a development that we describe as the "new hauntology." As we argue, this new hauntology favors the subjective rather than objective aspects of afterlives and consequently neglects questions of materiality. The overarching goal of Material Afterlives is to remedy this neglect. Following this, we examine the contributions and limitations of the concepts of ruin/ruination and waste to the investigation of material afterlives. While the concepts of ruin and waste presuppose a decrease in value in the face of time and change of function, material afterlives, by contrast, accentuate the proliferation of enhanced and unanticipated material values. We then enumerate the implications of our consideration of material afterlives for Memory Studies broadly, with particular emphasis on how material afterlives unsettle the orienting role of trauma in the discipline. Finally, we briefly outline the five specific contributions that constitute our volume.

A Haunting: An Archaeological Record in and of the Present

Haunting Phenomenon, Ruins, and Ghostly Entanglements, 2015

.Excerpt from my book.

The Social Ruin: A 'Performance Excavation'

Haunting Presences, Ruins, and Ghostly Entanglements, 2015

Excerpt from my book.

Introduction: Heritage and Belonging in Times of Political Polarization

Polarized Pasts: Heritage and Belonging in Times of Political Polarization, 2023

Intersections between private lives, public housing and national narratives: Community museums in Hong Kong and Singapore

The Museum in Asia, 2024

The bottom-up heritage campaigns that emerged in Hong Kong and Singapore in the last two decades challenged the governments’ prerogative to define which aspects of history are worth preserving and commemorating, since community campaigns often focus on physical sites, including housing estates and old schools, earmarked for redevelopment. Such community-led efforts also inherently undermined the governments’ legitimacy to define the physical planning of the two cities which remained driven predominantly by economic concerns. The heritage groundswell emerging in the two city-states was in part a reaction against the cities’ efficient but relentless strive for urban renewal, resulting in a sense of spatial dissonance that triggered residents’ alarm over the rapid pace and drastic alteration to their urban environment and their yearning for a city that treasured and celebrated places imbued with a sense of shared identity and deeper social meanings.

«The body tells you: “Listen to me!”». The experience of chronic pain in fibromyalgia syndrome

8th Ethnography and Qualitative Research Conference - University of Trento, 2021

Pain is a phenomenon that is difficult to frame and to define univocally because it appears to be closely linked to and shaped by the individual lived experience. Pain is always what is “done” with it and what the suffering person claims to feel: not a mere physical sensation, pain is the result of the personal elaboration of this sensation. From a medical anthropological prospective in this contribution I will focus on a specific form of daily pain, related to one peculiar syndrome: the fibromyalgia. By analysing some elements that came out from my recent ethnographic research, my intention will be to underline the interpersonal, communicative and political dimension of suffering namely the fact that if pain can, on the one hand, decrease the “ability to act”, on the other, it could be itself endowed with a peculiar form of agency. Indeed, pain could not only be passively experienced; contrarily it can be transformed itself into a cultural practice, an “activity” that allows the suffering person to renegotiate the relationship with the surrounding context, by experiencing new forms of “presence”

Riverbanks made by walking: understanding the temporalities of urban natures through atmospheres

PhD Thesis, 2019

Ghost developments on film : an experimental ethnographic exploration of place and space in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland

2017

James Gandon to design the estates' impressive double stable yard and imposing entrance gates. The lands were later rented again off Trinity College to Lefroy, who had been Newcomen's barrister. Of Huguenot descent, Lefroy quickly rose to become Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. He was once suitor to Jane Austen, and it is rumoured that the character Darcy in Pride & Prejudice is based on Lefroy. He dumped Austen because she had no money. The family established themselves in Tory politics in Longford in the guise of his heir Anthony Lefroy, and they were staunch defenders of the Protestant Ascendancy, and fierce opponents of Daniel O'Connell's Catholic Emancipation movement. Lefroy had emerging architect Daniel Robertson design and build the manor house in the Gothic Revival style in 1835, two years later the estate was hit badly by the Oíche na Gaoithe Móire (the Night of the Big Wind). The estate remained in the Lefroy family name until 2005 when it was sold to Thomas Kearns Developments (Kearns is now deceased). With much fanfare, a large scale hotel, golf course, new housing and apartment village (totalling some 331 units), nursery, health spa development was announced in May 2006, the then Minister for Finance Brian Cowen turned the sod at a gala opening. In October 2007 the subcontractors downed tools due to non-payment of wages and overheads, Thomas Kearns Developments went into liquidation, construction ceased and Carrigglas became a 'ghost estate'. The temporal, material and social intersect in odd and revealing ways in this spectacular spectral space. The townhouses and apartments of the unfinished 'village' exhibit the brand names of huge construction concerns, Kingspan and Century Homes, as the seemingly inexhaustible winds, perhaps the last traces of the Oíche na Gaoithe Móire, cause the plastic roof sheeting to dance an incessant and eerie dance. Mounds of topsoil are heaped here and there in anticipation of the golf course that was to be designed by World No.3 golfer Retief Goosen, a mocking physical comment on hubris and economic folly. The lead roofing of the Manor building, having survived 180 years of storms, revolutions, social and econonic changes, and indeed the proposed new development, was recently robbed by some illustrious thieves operating under the cover of darkness. The copper piping has been long since stripped from all the housing units. Most locals blame Travellers for this transgression, but it is equally as likely that it was reclaimed by subcontractors who had failed to be reimbursed for the materials they had installed in the units. Since the mid-2000s many 'ghost estates' have ruptured the Irish Landscape, at one stage there were 123 in County Longford alone, however none resonate quite as profoundly or are as otherworldly as the Carrigglas 'ghost development'.

Dispatches from Austerity-era Greece: Stranded in Arrival at Ellinikon Airport

2019

Invited Workshop Paper, “Urban Environments and Infrastructures of Asylum,” Berlin Workshop, Indiana University Europe Gateway, Berlin, Germany, October 28th-31st.