Elena Reichl M.A.

As a social and cultural anthropologist, I work as a research assistant at the Collaborative Research Center on Human Differentiation and am also a doctoral candidate at the Institute for Ethnology and African Studies (ifeas) at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU).

As part of my dissertation, I examined processes of human differentiation in informal support practices. This was based on a year-long ethnographic field study (2022–2024) in São Paulo and Curitiba, during which I observed the work of community kitchens, urban land occupations, and Christian congregations. The research focused on questions of self- and other-classifications, conceptions of humanity, and negotiations of vulnerability and distributive justice in contexts of social inequality.

In the second funding phase of the SFB, I am investigating in the follow-up project led by Heike Drotbohm, “Status and Mobility in Aid: Human Differentiation in Brazilian Social Programs for Poverty Alleviation,” specifically in the case study on Brazil (Belém), how social and spatial mobility are intertwined in state social programs and how this contributes to human differentiation. I am particularly interested in the extent to which different forms of mobility play different roles in the operationalization of aid measures and to what extent this—from the perspective of both aid providers and recipients—is linked to the anticipation or experience of status transitions.

Foto: Stephanie Füssenich