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Philosophische FakultätMESH

Sandro Simon, MA

Sandro Simon is a research associate at MESH and the University of Cologne’s Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology.

Sandro’s research has explored marginal(ised) economic practices and multispecies relations across watery environments in West-, East- and Central Africa. He works at the intersections of environmental and economic anthropology, the anthropology of work, legal anthropology, science and technology studies, poststructuralism and phenomenology. He does so multimodally, combining different methods and forms of representation, such as film, sound, photography, academic text and creative non-fiction.

Sandro’s academic stations include the universities of Freiburg i. Br. (DE), Basel (CH), Groningen (NL), Minnesota (USA) and Cologne (DE) and he has been part of the DELTA Junior Research Group. He has also worked for NGO’s in Switzerland and Ecuador. For his master thesis, he examined illegal(ised) urban agriculture practices in the wetlands of Bamenda, Cameroon (Simon 2016). For his dissertation he first worked in the Tana Delta, Kenya but had to cease research due to violence (Simon 2019), before working in the Sine-Saloum Delta, Senegal. His PhD project Mollusc Lifeworlds inquired the economics and corporealities of gleaning for molluscs and the ways their shells are mobilised in architecturing, ritual or socio-political articulation (e.g. Simon 2021, 2022, 2023a, 2023b). The unruly alliances of humans, molluscs and spirits, it shows, have been vital for the resilience of deltaic life in the face of (post)colonial frontierisation and environmental crisis.

Contact: sandro.simon[at]uni-koeln.de

Among his releases are:

  • Touching Excess: Haptic Sound from the Multispecies Delta. Special Issue Ethnographic Rubbish. Journal of Sonic Studies 25, 2024.

  • Rhythming Volatilities: Gleaning from and Salvaging for Capitalists. Special Issue ‘Volatility – Making and Unmaking Liveable Worlds’. Social Anthropology/Anthropology Sociale 31(4), 2023. 134-153.

  • The Art of Gleaning and Not Becoming Domesticated in Mollusc Waterworlds. Special Issue ‘‘Fluid Dispossessions’: Contested Waters in Capitalist Natures’. Ethnos, 2023. 1-20.
  • (with A. M. Ritz) Fluchtlinien der Erfahrung. Multimodale Widerspenstigkeit entlang der Siemensbahn Berlin (Multimodal Essay). Environmental Anthropology Network Special Section ‘Unruly Berlin’, 2023.
  • Rhythm and Aesthetics in Waterwork and Audiovisual Practice. Special Issue ‘Rhythmic Aesthetic Formations: Multimodal Explorations’. Entanglements 5(1/2), 2022. 233-243.
  • (with I. M. Cook, V. Hänsch) Introduction: Rhythmic Aesthetic Formations: Multimodal Explorations. Entanglements 5(1/2), 2022. 199-207.
  • Presence and Absence in Mollusc Lifeworlds and Visual Essays (Visual Essay). Special Issue ‘Visual Essays in Post-Digital Habitats’. AnthroVision 8, 2022. 1-14.
  • Bidonville–Bidonmondes (Multimodal Essay). Special Issue ‘Waste’. Anthropology Now, 2022. Print/Online.
  • Gleaning Time: Practice, Pause and Anticipation in the Sine-Saloum Delta, Senegal. In: Krause, F. und Harris, M. (eds.): Delta Life: Exploring Dynamic Environments where Rivers Meet the Sea. Oxford, New York: Berghan, 2021. 249- 270.
  • Bidonmondes. 6-Channel Video Installation. 2020. Extracting Us / ONCA Gallery Brighton. Re-exhibited 2022 in Despite Extractivism.
  • (with the DELTA team) Delta Worlds: Life between Land and Water. 2020. Reimer. 224 p. 
  • Deux Horizons. Split-Screen Video/Two Channel Audio. 4:16min. DV. 2020. Shown at different Conferences and Workshops.
  • Emotion and Epistemic Murkiness: Fieldwork under the Possibility of Fire. Sentio 1, 2019. 61-67.
  • mollUScs + MOLLusCS. In: Wüthrich, E. (ed.). Catalogue for the Artbook Fair 'I Never Read', Art Basel, 2019. No pagination.
  • Fearing Together, Fearing Alone: Fieldwork Under the Possibility of Fire. In: Krause, F. (ed.). Delta Methods: Reflections on Researching Hydrosocial Lifeworlds, Cologne Working Papers in Ethnology 7, 2018. 57-68.
  • Constructing the Tana Delta: Imaginaries, Scales and Placeness of Watery Infrastructure. Voices Around the World 3. Global South Studies Center, 2017. No pagination.
  • Fragile Ground, Contested Soil: Dynamics of Tenure and Policy in the Bamenda Wetlands. In: Boehi, M., Ramutsindela, M. und Miescher, G. (eds.): The Politics of Nature and Science in Southern Africa. Basel: Basler Afrika Bibliographien, 2016. 281-308.
  • (with Y. van den Berg) Report of the Conference 'Comment penser l'anthropocéne?' of the Collège de France', Paris (05-06.11.2015). In: Somatosphere.com
  • (with Y. van den Berg) The Anthropocene in the Classroom. In: Newsletter der Schweizerischen Gesellschaft für Afrikastudien (SGAS), 15/2, 2015. 40-41.
  • Work Life | Life Work - A Narration on Anthropological Fieldwork. In: Cargo Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 34, 2014. 38-39.
  • Report of the Conference 'Future Africa' of the Vereinigung für Afrikawissenschaften in Deutschland (VAD), Bayreuth (11.-14.07.2014). In: Newsletter der Schweizerischen Gesellschaft für Afrikastudien (SGAS), 14/2, 2014. 30-33.
  • Report of the Workshop 'The Politics of Nature and Science in African History' of the Basel Graduate School of History, Basel (15.-16.05.2014). In: HSozKult.de, 2014.