Affiliation: CMI-Chr. Michelsen Institute in Bergen, NO
Keywords: Social anthropology, Maritime territorialization, Transnational organized fisheries crime, Mobility, Marine ecologies, Blue heritage, Global commons, Ocean governance, Ocean literacy, Sustainability, Development
Full profile:
Edyta Roszko is a Senior Researcher at the CMI-Chr. Michelsen Institute in Bergen, Norway and a social anthropologist with regional experience in East and Southeast Asia whose work cross-cuts different themes and disciplines. After her PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology and Martin Luther University, Halle (2011), which focused on religion and politics in Vietnam, she completed ethnographic research among Chinese and Vietnamese fishing communities in the common maritime space of the South China Sea. Bridging different historical periods and countries, the question of the mobility, migration, and connectivity of fishers compelled her to historicize fishing communities and to work beyond the framework of the nation state and area studies.
In the last ten years, Edyta’s research has been funded by various prestigious institutions such as Academia Sinica, Berlin Forum Transregionale Studien, Marie-Curie Sklodowska Actions – European Commission, the Danish Research Council for Independent Research, the British Economic and Social Research Council, the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme and, more recently, by the European Research Council. Edyta’s newly awarded European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant project Transoceanic Fishers: Multiple Mobilities in and out of the South China Sea (TransOcean) at Chr. Michelsen Institute expands her geographic field beyond Vietnam and China to include other global regions in Oceania and West and East Africa. By historicizing maritime disputes and conflicts over access to marine and submarine resources, spaces and markets within fishing communities in and out of the South China Sea Edyta’s new project offers a new perspective on how territorial disputes interact with pre-nation-state patterns of mobility and produce new versatilities that operate under radar of states. One of its objectives is to advance a transoceanic knowledge base of and approach to intractable marine problems that will be of strong interest to practitioners and policy makers within the EU Integrated Marine Policy and beyond. By combining anthropology, political science, economy and history Edyta seeks to contribute to a wider dialogue about oceans as political, social, and ecological spaces that may spark important global crises – not only in terms of geopolitics but also livelihoods security.
As a Senior Researcher at CMI, Edyta is developing a new research direction on oceans which focuses on how natural causes and human actions affect and shape oceans and seas and what solutions for ocean sustainable development could be put forward. This new research direction builds on and expends her ERC-funded project TransOcean that looks specifically on the issues of ocean governance and sustainability. The aim is to provide scientific knowledge and expertise that bridge the gap between theory and practices of sustainability and ocean development.