Elisa Tamburo

Post-Doctoral Fellow in Anthropology
Photo of Elisa Tamburo
Tozzer Anthropology Building 406, 21 Divinity Ave. Cambridge, MA 02138
etamburo@fas.harvard.edu

Research Interests

Elisa is a sociocultural anthropologist and currently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow at the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University and the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford. Her research interests intersect urban, political, and environmental anthropology in East Asia (China and Taiwan) and East Africa (Kenya), with specialized expertise in the transnational transformation across cities in rapidly urbanizing contexts. Her current research project, "URBANEG - Negotiating the City: Urban planning and dwelling amidst China-built urban infrastructure in Nairobi, Kenya," investigates how Chinese-funded and constructed infrastructure is transforming urban life in Nairobi.

Her first book, titled Exiled in the City: Belonging, Loss, and the Politics of Relocation in a Taipei Military Village, examines the aftermath of a failed political ideal. It centers on the Kuomintang’s (KMT) failed China reunification project through the experiences of veterans in Taiwan’s military dependents’ villages — temporary settlements built in 1949 for KMT military personnel and their families. As the last living witnesses of the KMT’s project of retaking mainland China, these veterans embody the fading legacy of a collapsed nationalist vision, in which their resettlement in permanent homes in their senior years epitomizes the failed patronage between the state and its most loyal support group. Her book manuscript has been reviewed by Cornell University Press.

In the academic year 2024-2025, she served as a Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard, teaching courses on the Anthropology of China and cities. Elisa holds a PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology from SOAS, University of London  (2019).

 

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