Office: IG 0.552 (UG) Office hours: Please register for an appointment
Short biography
Dr. Sophia Hornbacher-Sch枚nleber took up her position as research associate and lecturer at 看片软件 (team Prof G枚pfert) in 2024. Her research centres on activism and the intersection of ethical reflexivity and political practice in Indonesia. After studying social and cultural anthropology as well as philosophy at the Universities of Freiburg (BA, 2014), Frankfurt (MA, 2016) and Cambridge (MRes, 2017), she completed her PhD on Marxist Muslim activists in Java at the University of Cambridge in 2021. Her thesis focused primarily on the ethical and intellectual work that activists do to reconcile these historically antagonistic traditions of thought in the Indonesian context. She is in the process of developing a book manuscript based on this research. Her current project drives the analysis of the intersection of ethics and politics further by exploring notions of social justice, egalitarianism and ecology in a grassroots peasant movement in Central Java against a transnational cement corporation. Since 2025, she is an elected member of the faculty council.
Research interests
activism, peasant/agrarian studies; socialism, the intersection of environmentalism and agrarian activism; politics and ethics; history and memory; Islam and secularism; ethnography of Indonesia (especially Java); methodology
Publications
Journal Articles
2024
鈥�." American Behavioral Scientist. (online first, open access)
2022
Demanding Images: Democracy, Mediation, and the Image-Event in Indonesia by K. Strassler and After the Tsunami: Disaster Narratives and the Remaking of Everyday Life in Aceh by A. Samuels. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 28(1): 348-50. (open access)
Academic Blogs and Grey Literature
2022
鈥�. Rezension: Wijaya Herlambang: Cultural Violence. Its Practice and Challenge in Indonesia." 厂眉诲辞蝉迟补蝉颈别苍 2022(1).
2021
Hornbacher-Sch枚nleber, S. et al. 2021. 鈥�". 厂眉诲辞蝉迟补蝉颈别苍 2021(3).
2020
Grossmann, K. and S. Hornbacher-Sch枚nleber. 2020. 鈥�'." 厂眉诲辞蝉迟补蝉颈别苍 2020(2).
2020
Timmann, A. et al. 2020.
鈥�'" 厂眉诲辞蝉迟补蝉颈别苍 2020(1).
2020
鈥�'." FocaalBlog, 11 May.
Teaching
Summer Term 2025 Political Anthropology (Undergraduate Seminar) Project Preparation (Undergraduate Seminar)
Winter Term 2024/25 Struggles for Justice, Rights, and Recognition (Undergraduate Seminar) Contemporary Theories in Social and Cultural Anthropology (Graduate Seminar)
Summer Term 2024 Power, Domination, and Resistance in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia (Undergraduate Seminar) Qualitative Research Methodology (Graduate Seminar)
