Graduate Lecture Series

Robin Balliger earned a PhD in anthropology from Stanford University and is currently Chair of Urban Studies at SFAI. Her research engages globalization, geography, media and popular culture, music/sound, postcolonial theory, political economy, and the Caribbean. Since the late 1990s, Balliger has conducted research in Trinidad on expressive culture, media expansion, and identity formation in national/transnational space to explore neoliberal transformations in culture and governance. Her current project centers on the ways in which the cultural sphere in Trinidad has been repositioned to communicate "global" status through arts-related urban development projects—and reactions to these changes by national artist/activists. Balliger has received fellowships including Fulbright, MacArthur, National Science Foundation, Mellon, and the Textor Award for Outstanding Anthropological Creativity. Her publications appear in The Global Resistance Reader; Trinidad Carnival: The Cultural Politics of a Transnational Festival; Anthropological Forum; City: Analysis of Urban Trends, Culture, Theory, Policy, Action; and Globalization, Diaspora and Caribbean Popular Culture.

Attendees are encouraged to come in costume—especially as your favorite vulture!