Siri LamoureauxNetwork Member
Siri Lamoureaux is an anthropologist, drawing inspiration mainly from pragmatist approaches in linguistic and semiotic anthropology, Science and Technology Studies (STS), and from moral and feminist philosophy. Since 2008, she has carried out fieldwork in Sudan, with a focus on the Nuba Mountains on topics including digital technologies and digital activism, gender, social and religious movements, morality, language and literacy, sexual violence and ethnic identity. Her PhD (2017), completed at Martin-Luther-University and the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology focused on a Christian ethnonational movement among Moro people from the Nuba Mountains living in Khartoum, and the gendered moral discourses that are at work within it. Her Master’s in African Studies (2009) at the University of Leiden studied the social, linguistic and digital translation of mobile phones in Khartoum and her first Master’s in linguistics (2004) analyzed aspects of Maa (Maasai) syntax.
She currently holds the position of Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin (roughly equivalent to “lecturer” in the UK or “assistant professor” in the US) in the Sociology Department (Workplace Studies) at the University of Siegen in Germany where she is also affiliated to the SFB 1187 project “Media of Cooperation”. She is participating in a larger project on African “Technoscapes” with Richard Rottenburg and other members of the Law, Organisation, Science and Technology (LOST) network. She is an associate of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology and the Centre d’études et de documentation économiques, juridiques et sociales (CEDEJ Khartoum) based in Sudan and an active member of AOEN, the Africa Off-Earth Network, a multidisciplinary group of researchers invested in studying space science projects in/off Africa. Her current research projects include sensory media technologies: Sudan’s first satellite launched in 2019 and the Square Kilometer Array, an Africa-to-Australia wide radio telescope observatory.
Research
My current research brings my long-standing interest in epistemology, modernity and knowledge production into the new field site of space science. In particular, I draw from my background in linguistics and STS to study the way spatial and terrestrial scientific objects are identified, documented, categorized and made actionable by the sensory media technology itself, as well as by physicists, astronomers, ecologists, data and GIS technicians and the larger community of stakeholders who then reach out to the public. How is data collected, made sense of, made operable and made visible in space science? The case studies that I am working on include satellite assemblages whose maps are generated in desertification projects in the Africa Sahel, and the Square Kilometer Array, a radio telescope observatory spanning Africa and Australia, projected to be the largest scientific infrastructure on Earth by 2027. In these projects, as with earlier projects, I am interested in how values, norms, chronotopes, spirituality, emotions as well as cognitive models figure in the work of constructing knowledge, whether looking at the sky, or at the Africa from above. Meanwhile, I keep one foot on the ground in Sudan, where questions of gendered agency, activism and digital technologies continue to demand attention in the wake of the 2019 revolution.
Publications
- Lamoureaux, Siri (forthcoming) (2022) "Making love matter: On the materiality of language and the sentiment of things." in A book of exercises in STS: On futures and designs of collective life , edited by Sung-Joon Park and Richard Rottenburg. Manchester: Mattering Press.
- Lamoureaux, Siri, Enrico Ille, Amal Hassan Fadlalla, and Timm Sureau (2021) "What Makes a Revolution ‘Real’? A Discussion on Social Media and Al-Thawra الثورة in Sudan." in Digital Imaginaries: African Positions Beyond Binaries , edited by Richard Rottenburg, Oulimata Gueye, Julien McHardy and Philipp Ziegler, 124-145. Bielefeld/Berlin: Kerber.
- Rottenburg, Richard, Enrico Ille, and Siri Lamoureaux (2021) "Nuba." in Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE , edited by Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas, and Everett Rowson. Leiden: Brill. → http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_40350
- Lamoureaux, Siri, and Richard Rottenburg (2021) "Doing postcolonial gender: An approach to justifying rights, resources and recognition." in Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society 4 (1). Thematic Cluster: Justifying Gender. → https://doi.org/10.1080/25729861.2021.1984040
- Lamoureaux, Siri (2021) "‘Il Faut Tout Un Village (Chrétien)…’ et Un Marché Musulman: Être Mère à La Périphérie de Khartoum." in Les Parentalités En Afrique Musulmane: Repenser La Famille à Partir de l’intérêt de l’enfant et Des Transformations Sociales , edited by Yazid Ben Hounet and Catherine Therrien, 139–153. Rabat: Centre Jacques-Berque.
- Lamoureaux, Siri, and Richard Rottenburg (eds.) (2021) "Thematic Cluster: Justifying Gender." in Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society 4 (1).
- Lamoureaux, Siri (2021) "Curating consent: Sexual violence, moral politics and gendered agency in Sudan." in Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society 4 (1). Thematic Cluster: Justifying Gender. → https://doi.org/10.1080/25729861.2021.1989859
- Turner, Irina, Siri Lamoureaux, and James Merron (2021) "Indiscipline as Method: From Telescopes to Ventilators in Times of Covid." in Filosofia Theoretica: Journal of African Philosophy, Culture and Religions 10 (3): 79-102. → https://doi.org/10.4314/ft.v10i3.6
- Lamoureaux, Siri (2020) "Ethnic Nationalism and Gendered Morality in the Semiotic Construction of the Moro Language of Sudan." in Faits de Langues 51 (1): 197-220. → https://doi.org/10.1163/19589514-05101012
- Lamoureaux, Siri and Timm Sureau (2018) "Knowledge and Legitimacy: The Fragility of Digital Mobilisation in Sudan." in Journal of Eastern African Studies 0 (0): 1–19. → https://doi.org/10.1080/17531055.2018.1547249
- Lamoureaux, Siri (2017) "Virtuous Language: Gendered Morality and Ethnonational Politics among Moro Christians in Sudan." Dissertation Thesis, University of Halle.
- Calkins, Sandra, Enrico Ille, Siri Lamoureaux, and Richard Rottenburg (2015) "Rethinking Institutional Orders in Sudan Studies: The Case of Land Access in Kordofan, Blue Nile and Darfur." in Canadian Journal of African Studies 49 (1): 175-195. → https://doi.org/10.1080/00083968.2014.963135
- Lamoureaux, Siri (2014) "The Order of Iconicity and the Mutability of ‘the Moro Language’." in Emerging Orders in the Sudans , edited by Sandra Calkins and Enrico Ille, 95–118. Oxford: African Books Collective.
- Lamoureaux, Siri (2013) "Identities of Place: Mobile Naming Practices and Social Landscapes in Sudan." in Side@Ways: Mobile Margins and the Dynamics of Communication in Africa , edited by Mirjam de Bruijn, Inge Brinkman, and Francis Nyamnjoh, 178–198. Leiden: Langaa Publishers/African Studies Centre.
- Lamoureaux, Siri (2013) "Nuba Christianity: A Search for Security in the North?" presented at Islamic Research Project Conference: Religious Minorities and Interreligious Relations, CEDEJ/Dutch Foreign Ministry, Sudan.
- Lamoureaux, Siri (2011) "Message in a Mobile: Mixed Messages, Tales of Missing and Mobile Communities at the University of Khartoum." Leiden: Langaa Publishers/African Studies Centre.
- Brinkman, Inge, Siri Lamoureaux, Daniela Merolla, Mirjam de Bruijn, and Richard Akum (2010) "Local Stories, Global Discussion: Websites, Politics and Identity in African Contexts." in Taking it to the Streets: Popular Media, Democracy, and Citizenship in Africa , edited by Herman Wasserman. London: Routledge.
- Lamoureaux, Siri (2009) "Imagined Connectivity, Poetic Text-Messaging and Appropriation in Sudan." in Communication Technologies in Latin America and Africa: A Multidisclipinary Perspective. Barcelona: Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.