Prior to coming to Lund University, I was a Senior Research Fellow at the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Institute for Sociology and an Associate Professor at Maynooth University in Ireland. Apart from Leading CONSPIRATIONS project I am also serving as a PI on the CHANSE project REDACT. In this project together with partners from the UK, Germany, Estonia and Croatia we analyse how digitalisation shapes the form, content and consequences of conspiracy theories. I am also involved in the CONNOR network, bringing together researchers studying conspiracy theories in the Nordic countries. The core of my work constitutes political anthropology which allows me to explore such fields as international development, state-NGOs relations and most recently tensions over conspiracy theories and democracy in Europe. 

Research interests: anthropology of state, social movements, conspiracy theories and disinformation, new media, NGOs, foreign aid, Europe, Ireland, Poland, Slovakia, South Sudan.  

My publications can be found here https://portal.research.lu.se/en/persons/elzbieta-drazkiewicz

Education: 

PhD, Anthropology, University of Cambridge, 2012 

MA, Etnology, University of Warsaw, 2005

MA, Anthropology, Lund University 2003

Anastasiya Astapova is an Associate Professor of Folkloristics (University of Tartu, Estonia) and a member of Estonian Young Academy of Sciences. Previously, she was interested in the research of post-socialist humor and rumor under authoritarianism (which, along with other publications, resulted in her monograph Humor and Rumor in the Post-Soviet Authoritarian State. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2021). In 2016-2020, Astapova was a board member of the COST project “Comparative Analysis of Conspiracy Theories”, within which she published a co-edited Conspiracy Theories in Eastern Europe: Tropes and Trends (Routledge, 2020) and a co-authored Conspiracy Theories and the Nordic Countries (Routledge, 2020), among other works. Astapova is one of the founding members of CONNOR: Nordic Network of Conspiracy Theory Research. At the moment, Astapova is a principal investigator in Estonian Science Foundation project “COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories: Contents, Channels, and Target Groups” and a member of Horizon project DELIAH: Democratic Literacy and Humor”. For "Conspirations" Astapova will look at conflicts around conspiracy theories in education and science in Estonia.

Shaban Darakchi holds a Ph.D. degree in sociology from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. His main professional interests are gender, sexuality and anti-gender movements. Dr. Darakchi is a researcher at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and the Slovak Academy of Sciences. Between 2019 and 2022, Shaban was a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. He has published one book and 24 articles exploring the intersections of gender and sexuality in Bulgaria. He is currently working on projects investigating anti-gender campaigns and non-heterosexual minorities in Bulgaria using narrative interviews, discourse analysis, and archives. His work in “Conspirations” project is focused on concurrent conspiracies related to “gender ideology”, child legislation and COVID-19 in Bulgaria. 

Google Scholar Profile 

Denys Gorbach is a political ethnographer whose main interests are everyday politics, class formation, migration, social movements and ideologies constructed from below, trade unions, industrial labour, and survival strategies of the working class. His previous research focused on Ukrainian workers. In his book, The Making and Unmaking of the Ukrainian Working Class: Everyday Politics and Moral Economy in a Post-Soviet City, he presents results of the ethnographic fieldwork he conducted in the city of Kryvyi Rih between 2018 and 2020. Participant observations made in the working-class milieu during wildcat strikes and the presidential elections of 2019 allowed him to grasp the contradictory nature of the 'ordinary' approach to politics. 

After a decade-long experience of working as an economic journalist in Kyiv, Denys obtained his second master degree at the Central European University's Sociology and Social Anthropology Department in 2017. In 2022, he was awarded a PhD degree by Sciences Po Paris. In 2023, he won a research grant from the French Red Cross Foundation to conduct field research on the survival strategies of Ukrainian war migrants in France. As part of the CONSPIRATIONS project, he conducts research fieldwork in Belgium. He focuses on the role of suspicion in the politicisation and the formation of the political worldview 'from below' among the Belgian new left. 

Marsanna Petersen is a PhD student in CONSPIRATIONS, who is responsible for the research of conspiracy theories and conflicts over truths in Sweden. Petersen is interested in the relation between conspiracy theories and politics and investigates if and how conspiracy theories can be understood as cultural meaning making practices within politics and political everyday life. Meaning making in relation to politics is studied in two different ways: 1) It is explored in terms of political strategies studying if and how conspiracy theories constitute central tools in opposition making practices when targeting political opponents 2) The project also explores the connection between conspiracy theories and political engagement and studies if they constitute an interlinked social phenomenon.

Petersen holds a MA degree in ethnology (2008) and a MA degree in Applied Cultural Analysis (2023). She also has previous transdisciplinary research experience from projects within medical humanities and disability research at Lund University. 

Angelina Uhl is a PhD Student in the CONSPIRATIONS project, who is responsible for the research of conspiracy theories and conflicts over truths in Germany. Her ethnographic fieldwork within the project focuses on the socio-cultural formations associated with conflicts over truth and cultural practices of either endorsing or countering conspiracy theories. One aim is to examine what role these cultural practices of conspiracy theories play in civil society engagement and to what extent it is perceived as either civil or un-civil involvement.

Uhl holds a MA degree in Cultural Theory and History from Humboldt University of Berlin (2023). Her research interests include everyday politics, right-wing extremism and populism, emotion and affect research, civil society research as well as gender and diversity. Her MA-thesis thematized everyday affective and emotional relations within right-wing alliances and the question of the extent to which emotions and feelings can lead to normalization and legitimization processes of right-wing politics.