Vytis Ciubrinskas | Anthropology | SIU

Vytis Ciubrinskas

Visiting Associate Professor

Vytis Ciubrinskas, Ph.D. 1993, Vilnius University, currently is a Professor of Sociocultural Anthropology at the Vytautas Magnus University. He has teaching experience from the UK, USA and Switzerland. 
 
In 2012-2014 he was leading a comparative research project on the impact of globalization and transnationalism on ethnic minority, borderland and diasporic cases in the UK, USA, Poland, and Lithuania; in 2014-2019 was engaged in international project on transnational families in the Baltic-Nordic migration space. In 2020-2022 he was leading an international project on return migration and social remittances in Croatia, Lithuania, Poland. 

He wrote a book on anthropological theory, co-authored a book on globalization and transnationalism from ethnic minority, borderland, and diasporic perspectives, edited a volume on comparative identity politics, citizenship, and transnationalism of the East European immigrants in the USA, UK, Ireland, Spain, Norway and guest-edited (in 2018) a special issue of Ethnologie Francaise and widely publishing his research in peer-reviewed journals and books. 
 
Editorial board member of: Anthropological Journal of European Cultures; Urbanities: Journal of Urban Ethnography; Lithuanian Ethnology; Philosophy/Sociology.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

- Migration and diaspora studies
- Ethnicity, nationalism and transnationalism
- Politics of identity, cultural heritage and social memory
- Post-socialist and postcolonial processes in Eastern Europe and South Asia
- Epistemology and the politics of sociocultural anthropology

Fieldwork Conducted and Geographical Focus:
- North America (USA – Southern Illinois, Texas, Chicago)
- Eastern Europe (Russia – Trans-Volga area)
- Central Asia (Kazakhstan)
- South Asia (India - Punjab)

Research Link:
https://vdu-lt.academia.edu/vytisciubrinskas

COURSES

Anth 485: Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Migration in a Post-Socialist World
Anth 410: Transnationalism, Ethnicity and Language
Anth 310D / 470D: (Trans)Nationalism and Cultural Identity in Central and Eastern Europe

RECENT FIELDWORK

In 2013-14 and 2021-22 fieldwork has been carried out in the areas of forced migration of the Lithuanians exiled, deported, or imprisoned by Czar and Soviet Russia (from 1860s - to 1940s) in the trans-Volga steppes of Russia and in North-Eastern Kazakhstan (Karaganda) by focusing on generational memories, politics of heritage and identity in post-diasporic livelihoods of descendants.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

(2022) “The Politics of Ethnicization: Political Subjectivities of Nation States in Relation to the Polish Minority in the Central Eastern Europe”, - Skalnik, Petr (ed.) Ernest Gellner’s Legacy and Social Theory Today. Palgrave Mackmillan, 2022, p. 481-499.

(2020) ”Singing Revolution Embraced Disciplines: Identity Politics vis-à-vis Ethnology and Anthropology”- Cargo:Journal for Cultural and Social Anthropology, vol.17, No 1-2:19-36.

(2020) “Uncertainties of Transnational Belonging: Homeland Nationalism and Cultural Citizenship of Lithuanian Immigrants in the USA”, - Folklore, vol. 78: 61-80. [doi:10.7592/FEJIF2020.78].

(2020) “Cultural citizenship and the social spaces of contemporary East European immigrants in Chicago”,- Urbanities: Journal of Urban Ethnography, 2020, vol. 10.(3): 95-110.

(2020) (co-authored with Jolanta Kuznecoviene) “Regaining Ethnic Ancestry and Heritage: ‘Roots’ Identity as Cultural Citizenship of Lithuanian Immigrant Descendants in Texas”,- Kockel, Ullrich, Phillip McDermott, Liam Campbell (eds.) Per Scribendum Sumus. Ethnopoesis, or; Writing Heritage. Wien: LIT Verlag. P. 107-116.

(2018) “Returning with Resources: Social Remittances and the Uncertain of Belonging of Transnatlantic Remigrants” ,- C. Hornstein -Tomič, R. Pichler, S. Scholl-Schneider (eds.) Remigration to Post-Socialist Europe. Hopes and Realities of Return. Wien-Zurich: LIT Verlag, 2018. p. 43-72.

(2018)”Transnationalisme et fragmentation identitaire. La citoyennete culturelle et le capital social post-socialiste des migrants lituaniens aux Etats-Unis”, - Ethnologie francaise, vol. XLVIII, no. 2, p. 319-328.

(2018) “Transnational Chicago: The Local and Translocal Networks and Loyalties of Post-Socialist Lithuanian Immigrants”, - Diogenes, published by SAGE: February 22, 2018, [doi: 10.1177/039219211774040].

(2017) “The Politics and Praxis of the Discipline(s) of ‘Studying „Our Own“ and/or „the Other“ People in Lithuania” , - Barrera-Gonzalez, Andres ; Monica Heintz and Anna Horolets (eds.), European Anthropologies. New York-Oxford: Berghahn books, 2017, p. 169-186.

(2017) “Transnational Fragmentation of Globality: Eastern-European Post-Socialist Strategies in Chicago”,- Pardo, Italo and Giuliana Prato (eds.) , The Palgrave Handbook of Urban Ethnography. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, p. 447- 464.

(2015) “Between ‘National Tradition’ and Human Condition: Politics, Methodology and Epistemology amidst Post-socialist Change”, - Teaching Anthropology, Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. 5:2-11.