Alyssa Grossman

Heritage studies
Postdoctoral Research Fellow

About

I completed my PhD in Social Anthropology with Visual Media at the University of Manchester, UK (2010). I received my MA in Visual Anthropology from the University of Manchester, and my BA in Anthropology from Brown University. Currently I am a post-doctoral research fellow in Heritage Studies, based at the School of Global Studies.

Areas of research

My present research explores everyday sites and practices of memory in post-socialist Bucharest, Romania. I have been incorporating visual media and other experimental practices into my anthropological work, particularly in my investigations of how on-going changes in Romania’s global framework intersect with remembrance processes at local, individual levels. I am interested in utilizing both writing and filmmaking to explore the overlapping realms of personal biography, cultural heritage, social history, and the poetics and politics of interpreting the past.

Current research

My research includes the production of two related audio-visual projects. The first, Memory Objects, Memory Dialogues, elaborates upon themes of memory and visuality through 16mm stop-motion animations of a collection of “memory objects” gathered during my recent fieldwork in Bucharest. The second project, Building on the Archive, uses visual media to analyze the production of memories connected to a body of home film footage originally made by a family of Jewish immigrants in New York during the 1920s and ’30s. My methodology includes multidisciplinary approaches, and I continue to be involved in long-term collaborative projects with Selena Kimball, a visual artist based in New York. In October 2011 I was a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Artistic Research at the University of Gothenburg’s Valand School of Fine Art.

Teaching and tutoring

 I have taught and tutored both undergraduate and graduate-level anthropology courses, including:

• European Societies—A Cross-Cultural Perspective
• Development and Emerging Inequalities in Eastern Europe
• Political and Economic Anthropology
• Materiality, Sensoriality, and Visuality
• Sex, Gender, Kinship
• Culture Through Film