MFEA – The Malinowski Forum for Ethnography and Anthropology Project

ANNOUNCING THE WINNER OF THE 2026 MALINOWSKI MASSON RESIDENCE FELLOWSHIP (MMRF). The Malinowski Forum for Ethnography and Anthropology is excited to announce that Emrah Yildiz (Associate Professor of Anthropology and MENA Studies, Northwestern University) has won the 2026 Malinowski Masson Residence Fellowship for his project“Outsmarting Sanctions: Experiments with Fictitious Commodities between Iran and Turkey”. Prof. Yildiz will carry out his project while enjoying a residency at the Malinowski Villa of Oberbozen-Soprabolzano between October-November 2026. First Runner-up for the Fellowship is María Lis Baiocchi (University of Pittsburgh), with the project “Performing like Servants to Become Workers: Household Workers and their Access to Labor Rights in Daily Life in Buenos Aires, Argentina”.  Arno Pascht (Ludwig-Maximilian Universität) has been designated Second Runner-up with “Transformations of Foodways in Vanuatu: Conceptualisations and Practices”. The competition received well over 70 applications. The MFEA Coordinators thank the applicants for their great interest and are grateful to the members of the selection committee for their hard work. The MMRF has been made possible through the generosity of the Stiftung Sparkasse and the Malinowski family, along with the additional support from the Anthropological Association South Tyrol and unibz.

Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942) was a founding figure of modern social-cultural anthro­pology. His name is pre­dominantly associated with the scientific formulation of ethnography as a research method, an innovation that changed the face of research in the social sciences and continues to have ramifications today.

Qualitative social scientists around the globe refer to this paradigm, but even many anthropologists are unaware of the special relationship that Malinowski had to South Tyrol: his family lived and holidayed in 1920s and 1930s in Bozen-Bolzano and Oberbozen, and his grandchildren continue to spend time in this home to this day. Additionally, much remains to be learned about his wife, Elsie Masson, who remained in South Tyrol while her husband was away for teaching and research activities: she was an active observer of South Tyrolean society under Fascism and collaborated with her husband on his publications. In recent years, a Provincial cultural commission established a historical marker at the Oberbozen villa. On 23 January 2017, the Mayor of Bolzano unveiled a plaque in piazza Gries, in memory of the places where the family lived in the city. Bozen-Bolzano’s “Hill of the Sages” garden is another site that commemorates Bronislaw Malinowski, with a tree planted in his honor.

Research Project

The MFEA project aims to study the works and lives of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson, focusing on their presence in South Tyrol. The research project investigates many issues of the Malinowski-Masson collaboration and the role of their private social network, which includes students and academics but also relatives and friends, in the rise of collective ideas and shared lifestyles that contributed to the development of science, ethnography and anthropology. (For more information, see the page Project).

Resources

The MFEA project makes available different resources about Malinowski, linking to the main archives and collections that provide manuscripts, papers, photos, letters and the objects that Malinowski brought with him from the Trobriand Islands.

It also offers a wide bibliography of both the Malinowskis’ works, such as monographs, articles, book reviews and introductions to students’ books, and works about Bronislaw Malinowski, Elsie Masson, the Trobriand Islands, the Malinowskian legacy in ethnography and history of anthropology. Some materials are available online as open access. Other materials are only accessible via the catalogue of the University of Bozen-Bolzano Library or those of other accredited universities. The bibliography is periodically updated.

Shared resources also contain links to the webpages of institutes and associations that promote public lectures, awards and conferences dedicated to the legacy of Bronislaw Malinowski.

Finally, they include videos about Malinowski, such as documentary trailers from YouTube, created by the RAI-Royal Anthropological Institute, by the BBC and by Zachary Stuart, Malinowski’s great-grandson.