Prof. Dr. Carolin Schurr

Unit Leader Social and Cultural Geography

Social and Cultural Geography

Phone
+41 31 684 89 12
E-Mail
carolin.schurr@unibe.ch
Office
314
Postal Address
University of Bern
Institute of Geography
Social and Cultural Geography
Hallerstrasse 12
CH-3012 Bern
Consultation Hour
please enquire by email if required

Home

As a feminist geographer, my research is concerned with the question of how globalisation processes penetrate the most intimate fields of our lives. Under the label "Global Geographies of Intimacy" (Pratt/Rosener 2006), I investigate how the value of bodies, lives and intimacy is stratified by access to reproductive technologies. In my research, I combine approaches from feminist geography with theories of affect, feminist and postcolonial technology studies and new debates around the reconceptualisation of the body in the wake of new materialism.

After studying geography, sociology and Latin American Studies at the University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt and Quito, Ecuador, I came to Bern in 2008 for my PhD. During my postdoc, I spent time at the University of British Colombia in Vancouver, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hil, the University of Bonn, the University of Zürich and the King’s College in London. In 2013, I received The Branco Weiss Fellowship from the Society in Science for my postdoctoral project “Making transnational baby markets”. In 2015, I was appointed as assistant professor of transcultural studies at the University of St Gallen. As associate professor, I head the research group Social and Cultural Geography at the University of Bern since August 2018.

CV

Theories

I explore the connections between the intimate and the global through theories of performativity and intersectionality, affect and emotion, feminist and postcolonial Science and Technology Studies, and new materialist approaches to the body.

Issues

My empirical work focuses on two different topics:

  • Reproductive geopolitics: globally unequal access to reproductive technologies (assisted reproductive technologies, surrogacy, egg donation, abortion, contraception, birth, pre- and postnatal health).
  • global/national intimate: Intertwining global and national policies with intimate experiences of love, care and reproduction.
  • Epigenetic geographies: environmental influences on reproductive bodies in relation to precarious working conditions in agriculture.
  • Geographies of social movements: Activist spaces of resistance, especially in the context of feminist movements and the digitalisation of social movements.
  • The global bioeconomy (assisted reproductive technologies, surrogacy and oocyte donation)
  • Processes of political change (with a focus on the political participation of women and minorities)

The two research interests are linked through my interest in bodies, the intimate and affect.

Regions

  • Latin America, especially Ecuador and Mexico
  • Europe, especially Switzerland, Spain and Germany

Methods

  • Feminist ethnographic methods
  • Affectual methods
  • Visual and multi-sensory methods

Education

2017-2018 Visiting Fellow am Centre Norbert Elias, EHESS Marseille 
2015 Postdoc King’s College London
2013-2015 Postdoc Department of Geography, University of Zürich
2012 Visiting Fellow at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and the University of British Colombia, Vancouver
2008-2012 PhD at the Department of Geography and the Interdisciplinary Center for Gender Studies (IZFG) at the University of Bern
2002-2007 BA- and MA studies in geography, sociology and Latin American Studies at the University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt
2004 DAAD exchange program at the Pontifica Universidad Católica del Ecuador in Quito

Professional career

Since 2021 Chair of the Equal Opportunities Commission of the Faculty of Phil-nat, University of Bern
(7 months maternity leave in 2021)
Since 2018 Associate Professor for Social and Cultural Geographies at the University of Bern
(4 month maternity leave in 2018)
2015-2018 Assistant Professor for Transcultural Studies at the University of St. Gallen
(4 month maternity leave in 2015)
2013-2015 Lecturer at the Department of Geography at the University of Zürich
2013 Lecturer at the Department of Geography at the University of Bonn
2008-2012 Lecturer at the Department of Geography at the University of Bern

Awards

2019 Ashby prize for the most innovative paper in the journal „Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space“ in the year 2018 
2013-2018 The Branco Weiss Fellowship – Society in Science
2013 Swiss Award for Latin American Studies
2007 Bickhoff Prize for the best final degree at the University of Eichstätt

Affiliations and memberships

 

google scholar: https://scholar.google.ch/citations?hl=de&user=sKb8iqgAAAAJ

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CarolinSchurr

Publications

Publication Year Type

Projects

Reproductive Geopolitics
Name

“Reproductive Geopolitics: Governing and Contesting In/Fertility in the Global Intimate”
Duration 2021 - 2025
Funding Swiss National Science Foundation SNSF
Link reproductivegeopolitics.ch
Involved researchers Carolin Schurr

Laura Perler

Nora Komposch

Mirko Winkel

Yolinliztli Pérez-Hernandez
Description The overall aim of the proposed project is to understand how uneven access to reproductive technologies reflects the valuation of certain bodies and lives. Whose bodies are reproduced in the future depends on who has access to reproductive technologies, here understood as both low-tech and high-tech technologies affecting fertility and infertility, conception and contraception, pregnancy and pregnancy termination, and birth and infanticide. While in the past states governed fertility through health regimes, family planning programs, and eugenics, in the present, the stratified access to reproductive technologies has resulted in a new mode of reproductive governance. The research field of reproductive geopolitics we aim to develop in this project will show how access to reproductive technologies becomes geopolitical when individuals, states, international organizations, transnational corporations, and religious and nongovernmental organizations define and contest whose bodies count as desirable for reproduction and whose bodies are denied reproduction or restricted in it. We will study the geopolitical governance of fertility through three marginalized populations: asylum-seeking women in Switzerland, indigenous women in Mexico and female migrant farm workers in Spain.

The three subprojects will analyze the entanglements of international and national politics – pertaining to the fields of migration, health, and sexual and reproductive policies – with women’s intimate lives. They advance the field of feminist geopolitics by articulating a reproductive geopolitics that elucidates how the governance of reproduction values some bodies over others and in doing so guards the boundaries of the nation.

To empirically capture marginalized women’s intimate experiences of reproductive governance, this project will advance an affectual methodology consisting of different participatory and creative methods which we develop through an affectual method toolbox. The affectual methods will generate sonic, visual, cartographic, and online data that we will use to a/effectively communicate these experiences to a broader public through an online and offline documentation.
Publications Sabin, Lucy; Komposch, Nora; Mestrot, Adrien (2023). Exhibiting toxicity: sprayed strawberries and geographies of hope. Cultural geographies Sage 10.1177/14744740231183202

Schurr, Carolin; Marquardt, Nadine; Militz, Elisabeth (2023). Intimate technologies: Towards a feminist perspective on geographies of technoscience. Progress in human geography, 47(2), S. 215-237. Sage 10.1177/03091325231151673

Perler, Laura (1 November 2021). Selektive assistierte Reproduktion. Gen-ethischer Informationsdienst (GID)(259), S. 34-36. 10.48350/165844

Perler, Laura (1 August 2021). Das Reproduktionseldorado Spanien. Die Ökonomisierung der spanischen „Eizellspende“. Gen-ethischer Informationsdienst (GID)(258), S. 32-34. 10.48350/165843

Siegl, Veronika; Bigler, Christine; Büchler, Tina; Perler, Laura; Schurr, Carolin (2021). Transnationale Reproduktive Mobilität aus der Schweiz (Stellungnahmen und Gutachten zur Fortpflanzungsmedizin). Bern: Bundesamt für Gesundheit 10.7892/boris.153272
Projektbeschreibung

Making transnational baby markets
Duration 2013 - 2019
Funding The Branco Weiss Fellowship – Society in Science
Description The project asks how the innovation and spread of assisted reproductive technologies has created a transnational market of reproductive materials (ova, sperm, embryos) and reproductive services such as artificial insemination, in-vitro-fertilization and surrogacy. To understand how these markets are made, maintained and extended within the Global South, the project follows the transnational circulation and traveling of bodies, reproductive materials, technologies, knowledge, and socio-technical devices that constitute and transnationalize this market. On the conceptual side, the project integrates feminist and postcolonial Science and Technology Studies into geographies of marketization, making latter more attentive to the way bodies, gender and technology intersect in markets in the Global South. On the empirical side, it develops a better understanding how ART markets are made and expand in the Global South and how this spread affects the bodies of women and men in the Global South. The empirical results of the project inform (inter-)national debates on the regulations of these transnational markets.
Publications Komposch, Nora; Schurr, Carolin (2020). A portrait of assisted reproduction in Mexico: scientific, political, and cultural interactions. New genetics and society, 40(2), S. 240-241. Taylor & Francis 10.1080/14636778.2020.1775564


Perler, Laura; Schurr, Carolin (2020). Intimate Lives in the Global Bioeconomy: Reproductive Biographies of Mexican Egg Donors. Body & society, 27(3), S. 3-27. SAGE Publications 10.1177/1357034X20936326


Schurr, Carolin; Militz, Elisabeth (2020). Reproductive rights. In: Kobayashi, Audrey (Hg.) International Encyclopedia of Human Geography (S. 435-442). Elsevier 10.1016/B978-0-08-102295-5.10234-3


Schurr, Carolin (2018). Multiple mobilities in Mexico’s fertility industry. Mobilities, 14(1), S. 103-119. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group 10.1080/17450101.2019.1522881


Perler, Laura; Schurr, Carolin (2019). Kinderwunschklinik. In: Hasse, Jürgen; Schreiber, Verena (Hg.) Räume der Kindheit. Ein Glossar (S. 173-178). Bielefeld: transcript 10.7892/boris.131247


Schurr, Carolin (2018). The baby business booms: Economic geographies of assisted reproduction. Geography compass, 12(8), S. 1-15. Wiley-Blackwell 10.1111/gec3.12395


Schurr, Carolin; Militz, Elisabeth (2018). The affective economy of transnational surrogacy. Environment and planning. A, Economy and space, 50(8), S. 1626-1645. Sage 10.1177/0308518X18769652


Müller, Martin; Schurr, Carolin (2016). Assemblage thinking and actor-network theory: conjunctions, disjunctions, cross-fertilisations. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 41(3), S. 217-229. Wiley 10.1111/tran.12117


Schurr, Carolin (2017). From biopolitics to bioeconomies: The ART of (re-)producing white futures in Mexico's surrogacy market. Environment and planning. D, Society and space, 35(2), S. 241-262. Sage 10.1177/0263775816638851


Schurr, Carolin; Abdo, Katharina (2016). Rethinking the place of emotions in the field through social laboratories. Gender, Place and Culture, 23(1), S. 120-133. Routledge 10.1080/0966369X.2014.970138


Schurr, Carolin; Friedrich, Bettina (2015). Serving the transnational surrogacy market as a development strategy? In: Coles, Anne; Grey, Leslie; Momsen, Janet (Hg.) The Routledge handbook of gender and development. Routledge handbooks (S. 236-243). London u.a.: Routledge (link)


Schurr, Carolin; Perler, Laura (17 Dezember 2015). ‘Trafficked’ into a better future? Why Mexico needs to regulate its surrogacy industry (and not ban it). Open Democracy OpenDemocracy (link)


Schurr, Carolin; Walmsley, Heather (Mai 2014). Reproductive tourism booms on Mexico’s Mayan Riviera. International Medical Travel Journal (link)
Projektinformationen

Performing Politics, Making Space: A visual ethnography of political change in Ecuador
Duration 2008 - 2012
Funding Schweizerischer Nationalfonds SNF
Description Constructing more inclusive political spaces has been a central concern of social movements in postcolonial societies. This project engaged with Ecuador’s recent processes of political transformation by questioning to what extent these contribute to a decolonization of Ecuador’s democracy. Based on visual ethnographic research in Ecuadorian local politics, the research interrogated the effect of women’s and indigenous people’s political participation on building more inclusive, intercultural political spaces. It developed a poststructuralist electoral geography capturing the embodied, emotional, and intersectional performances that produce political spaces. In doing so, it breaks new empirical ground and expands the field of electoral geography, connecting it to current conceptual debates in human geography. This approach is supported by Mouffe’s antagonistic politics, Butler’s discussion about performativity of gender and Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality.
Publications Schurr C, 2013 Performing politics, making space: a visual ethnography of political change in Ecuador (Franz-Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart). (link)


Schurr C, 2012, "Visual ethnography for performative geographies: how women politicians perform identities on Ecuadorian political stages" Geographica Helvetica, 67, 195-202. (pdf)


Schurr C, 2012, "Pensando emoções a partir de uma perspectiva interseccional: as geografias emocionais das campanhas eleitorais equatorianas. Revista Latino-Americana de Geografia e Gênero" Revista Latino-Americana de Geografia e Gênero, 3, 3-15. (pdf)


Schurr C, Segebart D, 2012, "Tackling feminist postcolonial critique through participatory and intersectional approaches" Geographica Helvetica, 67, 147-154. (pdf)


Schurr C, 2013, "Towards an emotional electoral geography: the performativity of emotions in electoral campaigning in Ecuador" Geoforum, 49, 114–126. (link)


Schurr C, 2014, "Performativity and antagonism as keystones for a political geography of change", in Performativity, politics and the production of social space Eds M Glass, R Rose-Redwood (Routledge, New York), pp 95-120. (link)

Presentations

Invited Presentations

2022  
November 16 Tage gegen Gewalt an Frauen, University of Bern | Switzerland
"Feminizid - Wissenschaftliche Spotlights auf das Thema Frauenmord"
Swiss geoscience meeting 2022, Lausanne  | Switzerland
"Feminist Geopolitics for a new world (without war)"
KU Wintervortragsreihe 2022/23 | Germany
"Reproduktive Geopolitik zwischen Kinderwunsch und Bevölkerungspolitik" 
October Reproductive Migrations: Mobility, Stratification and Reproductive Labour, University of Oxford | UK 
"From reproductive mobilities to reproductive geopolitics"
June Nordic Geographers Meeting, Joensuu | Finnland 
"Space and Polity Lecture: Reproductive Geopolitics"
2021  
October Human Reproduction Reloaded  University of Zürich | Switzerland
„Reproduktive Mobilität“ 
September International Geographic Union (IGU) | Chile
„Geopolítica Reproductiva“ 
2020  
February Treffen der ASG Gruppe Feministische Geographien an der Université de Neuchatel | Switzerland
"Roundtable Feminist Geographies in Switzerland"
Tag der Lehre, University of Bern | Switzerland
„Digital die Stadt Bern erkunden: Podcasts, Selbst- und Kontaktstudium“
January Geographisches Kolloquium der Universität Leipzig und Institut für Länderkunde (IfL) | Germany
„Feminist geographies of technoscience“ 
Geographisches Kolloquium der Universität Dresden | Germany
„Feminist geographies of technoscience“
Geocompass, Universität Passau | Germany
„Mobile women: global care workers, surrogate mothers and egg donors“
2019  
November Swiss Geoscience Meeting Fribourg | Switzerland
„Career paths in geography: Five strategies for survival“
CUSO Graduate School Morges | Switzerland
„Critical race geographies“
September Deutscher Kongress für Geographie, Kiel | Germany
Keynote-Vortrag „From Margin to Center? Theoretische Aufbrüche in der Geographie seit Kiel 1969“ (mit Peter Weichhart) 
Mai Geographisches Kolloquium der Universität Wien | Austria
Wunschkinder made in Mexico: Reproduktive Geographien zwischen Biopolitik und Bioökonomie 
2018  
Mai Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Marseille | France
The affective economy of surrogacy
Februar Centre Norbert Elias, Marseille | France
Circumvention, experimentation and improvisation as response to legal changes in global surrogacy markets
Januar Neue Kulturgeographie, Freiburg | Germany
Ethics in geographic research practice
2017  
Mai Gender Studies, Universität Zürich | Switzerland
Reproductive geographies and the reconfiguration of race, gender and sexuality
2016  
Dezember Institute of Biomedical Ethics, Universität Zürich | Switzerland
India, Thailand, Mexico – uneven geographies of assisted reproduction
November School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Universität St. Gallen | Switzerland
Transcultural bodies
Department of Geography, HU Berlin | Germany
White Babies made in Mexico: Biopolitical geographies of reproduction
Mai Department of Geography, Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona | Spain
Reproducing the nation? Biomedical geopolitics

Regular Presentations

2022  
November Swiss Geoscience Meeting, Lausanne | Switzerland
'Reproductive Geopolitics'
2020  
Januar Neue Kulturgeographie, Universität Bonn | Germany
„Reproductive geopolitics: mapping global fertility networks"
2018  
November Society in Science Symposium, Zürich | Switzerland
'Transcultural geographies and epigenetic bodies'
April Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, New Orleans | USA
‘Complicating (Un-)Comfortable Alliances in the Brave New World of Reproduction’ (mit Elisabeth Militz)
Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, New Orleans | USA
‘Geographies of Beauty between Postcolonial Geographies and Critical Whiteness Studies’
2017  
Oktober Deutscher Kongress für Geographie, Tübingen | Germany
‘Transcorporeal geographies’ (mit Elisabeth Militz)
Kritischer Kongress für Geographie, Tübingen | Germany
‘Affective methodologies’ (mit Elisabeth Militz)
Februar Transfigurationen: Medizin Macht Gesellschaft, Basel | Switzerland
‘Biopolitical transfigurations in Mexico’s bioeconomy’ (mit Laura Perler)

Conferences, Workshops and Sessions

Selection since 2017

2022  
June BIOS: Feminist Science and Technology Studies, Burgdorf | Switzerland
April Emilie Jäger Lecture, Bern | Switzerland
mLAB Symposium "Other Cartographies", Bern | Switzerland
2018  
April Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, New Orleans | USA
'Author-meets-readers: Reading Stacy Alaimo's "Exposed"' (mit Elisabeth Militz)
September Summer School Gender and Space, Aargau | Switzerland 
2017  
October Deutscher Kongress für Geographie, Tübingen | Deutschland
'Geographies of the new materialism' (mit Nadine Marquardt)
March Transcultural bodies: geographies of racialized embodiment, St. Gallen | Schweiz
January Bios: Commodification of bodies, Frankfurt | Deutschland

Teaching

Current Teaching

2023 Fall BA Lecture "Humangeografie I"

 

Past Teaching

2022 Spring MA Seminar "Geopolitics: Bodies, Borders and Bombs" (with Devran Öcal)
2022 Spring MA Studio "Mapping the global/intimate" (with Mirko Winkel)
2022 Spring Researchcolloquium and - practica
2021 Fall BA Lecture "Humangeographie I"
2021 Fall Researchcolloquium and - practica
2020 Fall BA Lecture "Humangeografie I"
2020 Fall BA Lecture "Orte der Globalisierung"
2020 Fall MA Lecture "Aktuelle Perspektiven der Politischen Geographie"
2020Spring MA Studio „Digitale Methoden“ (with Jasmine Truong, Jeannine Wintzer und Mirko Winkel) (University of Bern)
2020Spring MA Seminar „Mehr als humane Geographien: Technologien, Kultur und Natur“ (with Elisabeth Militz, Mirko Winkel and Julia Poerting)(University of Bern)
2020Spring BA field trip "Recht auf Stadt" (University of Bern)
2019 Fall BA Lecture 'Human Geography I' (University of Bern)
2019 Spring BA Proseminar 'Digitale Geographien des global/intimate' (University of Bern)
2019 Spring BA Field Trip 'Soziale Ungleichheiten in der Stadt Bern' (University of Bern)
2017 Fall MA Seminar 'Making mobile markets' (University of St. Gallen)
2017 Spring MA Seminar 'Love/ hate: The transcultural politics of emotions' (University of St. Gallen)
2017 Spring BA Project-Seminar 'Bodies for sale? Global markets for babies, bodies, and organs' (University of St. Gallen)
2016 Fall MA Seminar 'Culture, mobility and space' (University of St. Gallen)
2016 Fall BA Project-Seminar 'Follow the market: Researching transcultural economies' (University of St. Gallen)
2016 Spring BA Project-Seminar 'Culture, migration and work' (University of St. Gallen)
2015 Spring BA Seminar 'The sharing economy' (University of Zürich)
2014 Fall MA Seminar 'Gender, space and work' (University of Zürich)''
2014 Fall MA Field Trip 'Gender, space and work in Zürich' (University of Zürich)
2014 Fall BA/MA Workshop 'Feminist geographies' (Zürich, Frankfurt, Bayreuth, Hamburg)
2014 Spring BA Seminar 'Heterodox economic geographies' (University of Zürich)
2013 Spring MA Seminar 'Ethnography is not what it used to be' (University of Bonn)
2013 Spring MA Seminar 'Postcolonial studies' (University of Bern)
2013 Spring BA Field Trip 'Die exklusive Schweiz' (University of Bonn)
2012 Fall MA Lecture 'Postcolonial development geographies' (University of Bern)
2012 Fall BA Seminar 'Identity and space' (University of Innsbruck)
2012 Spring BA Field Trip 'Exclusion and inclusion in urban space' (University of Bern)
2011 Fall MA Guest Lecture 'Geographies of the alps and mountains: Mining from a postcolonial perspective' (University of Bern)
2011 Spring BA Field Trip 'Urban geographies of difference' (University of Bern)
2011 Spring BA Seminar 'Identity and space' (University of Innsbruck)
2010 Fall BA Guest Lecture 'Postcolonial development geographies' (University of Bern)
2010 Fall BA Seminar 'Identity and space' (University of Innsbruck)
2010 Spring BA Lecture 'Visual methods in qualitative research' (University of Bern)
2010 Spring BA Field Trip 'Migration and integration in the city of Bern' (University of Bern)
2010 Spring BA Seminar 'Identity and space' (University of Innsbruck)
2009 Fall BA Lecture 'Introduction to human geography' (University of Bern)
2009 Fall BA Guest Lecture 'Feminist geographies' (University of Neuchâtel)
2009 Spring BA Lecture 'Qualitative methods' (University of Bern)
2009 Spring BA Seminar 'Geographies of migration' (University of Bern)
2009 Spring BA Field Trip 'Geographies of migration' (University of Bern)
2008 Fall BA Lecture 'Globalisation of cultures' (University of Bern)
2008 Fall BA Seminar 'Globalisation of cultures' (University of Bern)
2008 Spring MA Project Seminar 'World heritage and tourism' (University of Eichstätt)
2007 Fall MA Seminar 'Geographies of (post-)development' (University of Eichstätt)