Almut Schneider studied social anthropology, history and philosophy in Berlin, Edinburgh and Paris. After 20 months of ethnological fieldwork in the western highlands of Papua New Guinea, she obtained her doctorate from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris) 2011 with a work on ceremonial exchanges, horticulture and the cosmology of the Gawigl. This was followed by academic positions in Berlin, Heidelberg and Münster. Since 2015, she has been conducting research in the European Alps on the social and ecological dynamics of high-altitude lives and economies. From 2019 to 2022, she investigated the relationships between mountain farmers and their land and animals in South Tyrol. From 2023 to 2025, she worked in Switzerland on the Swiss National Science Foundation-funded project “Global Pastures – Ethnographic Explorations of Alpine Grassland Connections”, analysing the interrelationships between alpine pasture landscapes, human and non-human actors, and global networks.
Thematic focus:
Human-environment relations/relationships with non-human actors, value systems, kinship relations, exchange systems
Regional focus:
Europe, European Alps, Melanesia
Publications:
2024 Exploring ethnography for moving mountain confines - an introduction. In Schneider, Almut and Elisabeth Tauber (eds.) New Horizons for the Alps: Ethnographies, reshaping challenges and emerging more-than-alpine relations, Bolzano: bu,press.
2024 “What does a high-altitude farmer do? Different perspectives on mountain practices”. In Schneider, Almut and Elisabeth Tauber (eds.) New Horizons for the Alps: Ethnographies, reshaping challenges and emerging more-than-alpine relations, Bolzano: bu,press.
2022 Die da unten und die da oben – Verständnisschwierigkeiten in einer europäischen Bergregion. In: Ethnologie als Alltagsressource. Berlin: Reimer. In Hardenberg, Platenkamp et al. (eds.) – Ethnologie als Angewandte Wissenschaft - Das Zusammenspiel von Theorie und Praxis, pp. 33–44. Reimer: Berlin
2022 Land’s constraints and possibilities – High-altitude farmers in the Eastern Alps. Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment 44(1): 342–61.
2019 with E. Tauber, Beziehungsgeflechte – ethnologische und historische Perspektiven auf Südtiroler Bergbauern, in Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologie 68. (1): 105-111.
2019 with E. Tauber, Relations to land in the Eastern Alps The challenge of framing comparative questions. Etnografia e Ricerca Qualitativa 2019(2): 265-271.
2019 mit J. Platenkamp (eds.) Integrating Others – Perspectives from Elsewhere, Palgrave Macmillan.
2019 Placing the newcomer – staying with the Gawigl of Highland Papua New Guinea, in: Platenkamp and Schneider (eds.) Integrating Others – Perspectives from Elsewhere, Palgrave Macmillan.
2017 Parler des "raisons" dans la société Gawigl, in: David Gibeault und Stéphane Vibert (ed.) Autorité et pouvoir en perspective comparative, Textes en hommage à Daniel de Coppet, Paris: Presses de l’Inalco.
2017 La vie qui vient de loin; croissance, échanges et rituel dans les Hautes Terres de la Papouasie-Nouvelle-Guinée, Berlin : Lit (in : Studies in Social and Ritual Morphology).
2016 “Making the Spirit” - The Potential of Knowledge from Elsewhere in: Prager, Laila; Michael Prager und Guido Sprenger (Hg.), Parts and Wholes – Essays on Social Morphology, Cosmology, and Exchange in Honour of J.D.M. Platenkamp, Münster: Lit. (413-421)
2011 mit M. Strathern, Obligations in Relationships, A Western Highlands Case Study, Publications of the National Research Institute, Occasional paper No. 3,: Port Moresby.
2011 L’amour est-il un concept pertinent dans les Hautes-Terres de la Papouasie-Nouvelle-Guinée ? Online-Publikation auf der Webseite des Réseau Asie (4e Congrès) http://www.reseau-asie.com/userfiles/file/E06_schneider_amour_papouasienvleguinee.pdf
2010 The Distinction of Sex and Generation in Gawigl Relationship Terminology, in: Peter Berger, Roland Hardenberg, Ellen Kattner und Michael Prager (Hg.) The Anthropology of Values: Essays in Honour of Georg Pfeffer, New Delhi: Pearson-Longman (pp. 59-76).
2007 Papous, Texte zum Bildband von Eric Lafforgue, Paris: Kubik.
2007 Aspects de l’espace-temps dans un rituel des Gawigl (Papouasie-Nouvelle-Guinée)”, Online-Publikation auf der Webseite des Réseau Asie (3e Congrès) http://www.firsturl.de/sGhe7yL
