Anthropology of childhood, emotion and affect, migration and family relations, international development, early childhood interventions, cross-disciplinary collaborations

Madagascar, Vietnam, Germany

Gabriel Scheidecker is Assistant Professor at the Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies (ISEK), University of Zurich. He received his PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the Free University of Berlin in 2015. Before that he graduated in Philosophy and Historical Anthropology from the University of Freiburg, Germany.

A cross-cutting theme of his research is childhood, which he explores in various settings. Currently he is conducting research as a principle investigator of the project “Saving Brains? Applying Ethnography to Early Childhood Interventions in the Global South” (2023-2028), funded by an SNSF Starting Grant. The project aims to do both, conduct ethnographic research about early interventions and initiate cross-disciplinary debates about the scientific and ethical validity of such interventions. During his postdoc he focused on children and families in Berlin with a Vietnamese migration history, and their interaction with institutions of childcare and parenting support. For his PhD he conducted research about emotion socialization and relationship formation in a rural community in Madagascar.

For publications see
Researchgate
Google scholar

Saving Brains? Applying Ethnography to Early Childhood Interventions in the Global South