Pia Maier

Pia Maier 

Email: pia.maier@uni-konstanz.de

Post office box: 38

Pia Lorina Maier is a PhD candidate in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Department of Sociology and History. She is currently employed in the Anthropology Department to conduct a literature review for a potential new research project. She worked in the project “Aspirational Activism in Urban Latin America” (DGF funded) at LMU Munich from January to December 2019. Before, she was a researcher in the graduate school "The Problem of the Real in Modern Culture" from May 2014 to December 2018. In 2011, she earned her B.A. in Sociology and Spanish Studies at University of Konstanz with one semester at Universitatea Alexandru Ioan Cuza Universität Iași (Romania) and studied Sociology with a focus on Cultural Anthropology and Cultural Sociology at University of Konstanz and McGill University in Montréal (Canada) in her Master’s (M.A., 2013). During her Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD studies, she conducted fieldwork in Germany and Nicaragua.

PhD project description
The trauma of others. An ethnographic study in trauma workshops for helping professions.

This PhD project deals with discursive and narrative patterns, epistemological practices and techniques, as well as artifacts and materializations concerning the concept of ‘trauma’ that are involved in the preparation of precarious experiences in helping professions from an anthropological-sociological perspective. In a field that understands traumatization as a problematic ‘break-in of the real’ which is therefore to be avoided, this study problematizes common conceptualizations of ‘trauma’. The project is based on the observation by several authors (e.g. Fassin & Rechtman, Bracken & Petty, Necocleous) that as the use of the term trauma has been increasing worldwide, paradoxically, so has the pressure towards the politicized universalization and subjectification of human suffering. This process is supported through the production of medical and psychological ‘facts’ that are demanded as proofs for the recognition of this suffering. Organizations that are committed to humanitarian principles and whose employees are engaged as helpers in crisis- and catastrophe-coping do not only operate after crises and disasters; they also play a role in the preparation of critical incidents through training programs, aimed at helping these employees to avoid work-related traumatization in an anticipatory manner. Based on participant observation of these training programs with a comparative perspective (Germany, Nicaragua) as well as the interactions between counsellors and employees of national and international humanitarian organizations, this project analyzes the sociocultural patterns and manifestations of these efforts to avoid work-related traumatization.

Talks:

• Non-political non-knowledge in trauma work. Workshop: Non-political figurations, Conference of the German Anthropological Association (DGSKA) 2019, Universität Konstanz, 01.10.19
• Psychologizing social inequality and political demands: the rising popularity of psychotherapeutic interventions in Nicaragua, Workshop: Aspirational politics? Exploring repercussions of emerging middle classes in Latin America, LMU München, 17.05.19
• Work on Body and Emotion in Nicaraguan Trauma Workshops. Amerikas Colloquium, LMU Munich, 02.05.19
• Dialogical Anthropology, Transatlantic Seminar "Singularity and Representation", University of Chicago, 26.05.18
• Contrapunteo "Trauma": Nicaraguan criticism beyond psychiatric conventions, panel: Contrapunteo Medical Anthropology: Talking back to Convention, conference Contrapunteo,  organized by the Canadian Anthropological Association with the Universidad de Oriente (CASCA-Cuba), Universidad de Oriente in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, 19.05.18
• Vulnerabilities at work. Insights from trauma trainings and domestic violence counselling, mit Melanie Brand, SANT/FAS Conference on "Vulnerabilities", April 19th to 21st in Uppsala, Sweden, 19.04.18
• The counter concept of Trauma in Nicaragua, UNAN in León, Nicaragua, 14.03.18
• Working on emotion: trauma training for humanitarian interventions, Care in Crisis – Ethnographic Perspectives on Humanitarianism, Section: Emerging socialities: negotiating affective asymmetries, Department of Anthropology and African Studies (ifeas), University of Mainz, Germany, 24.02.18
• Causal chains in explanatory models for "trauma" - German and Nicaraguan Examples, 19. Jahrestagung der DeGPT / 22. Zürcher Psychotraumatologietagung, University of Zürich, 10.02.17
• Helpers in the conflict between care and self-care. Anthropological perspectives, 4. Deutsche Fachtagung Notfallpsychologie - Wissenschaft und Theorie treffen Praxis, University of Magdeburg, 16.10.15

Organized panels:

Counselling 'the Vulnerable', with Melanie Brand, SANT/FAS Conference on "Vulnerabilities", in Uppsala, Sweden, 19.04.18

Teaching:

• Seminar "Healing, Health and the Body”, Winter Term 2018/19, University of Konstanz
• Guest lecture: Avoiding the Suffering. Techniques of the self in the preparation and debriefing of trauma-work. Seminar: Anthropology of Suffering, Baden-Württemberg seminar by Maria Lidola, 21.06.18
• Seminar ‘"Trauma" from a sociological and anthropological viewpoint’, Winter Term 2015/16, University of Konstanz
• Spring Term 2018 - UNAN in León (Nicaragua) - Norwegian program "Latin American Studies" (Kulturstudier) - three lectures: "Introduction to Latin American Studies II", "Family and Household", and "Health and Wellbeing"
• Guest lecture in the seminar "anthropology of crisis" by Michael Bürge

Activities