DPhil, Social and Cultural Anthropology
Wolfson College
Thesis: Senses of Self: visual self-fashioning among Bamileké women in Yaounde, Cameroon (working title)
Research: My doctoral research is an exploration of aesthetic and gendered forms of self-representation among Bamileké women in Yaounde, Cameroon, mediated through entangled practices of photography and dress. I investigate how women construct their visible selves that take the form of dress styles, photographs taken at the studio, selfies with a mobile phone, photographic display in an album and on Facebook. In this I analyse how self-representation is enabled by various material technologies and how these technologies in turn influence ideas and practices of female self-representation. In particular, I focus on the ways in which self-representation becomes a means for women to construct themselves as aesthetic female subjects and how aesthetic practices become a central element for female personhood as well as a means for intimacy, sociality and adulthood.
Research interests: anthropology of gender, visual anthropology, postcolonial studies, popular culture, West Africa - Cameroon.
Email: ewa.majczak@anthro.ox.ac.uk
