Short Biography

 Rosalie Stolz is the principal investigator of the project Construction Pioneers: Building Innovation in Upland Northern Laos funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Before starting in Cologne, she held a Guest Professorship at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Freie Universität Berlin. Rosalie is the author of Living Kinship, Fearing Spirits (2021, NIAS Press) and has published in various journals including American Anthropologist, Ethnos, Social Anthropology, Social Analysis and HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory among others.

She was the principal investigator of the project Making Aspirations Concrete. The Rise of Concrete Houses and Current Socio-Economic Change in Upland Southeast Asia (funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation). This project focussed on the wide-spread transformations of houses in Southeast Asia. In her earlier PhD research project, she investigated processes of kinship and sociality among Khmu speakers in the uplands of northwestern Laos.

Rosalie conducts ethnographic fieldwork in northern Laos and aims to shed light on the changing lives of upland dwellers, in particular Khmu speakers.

Research Interests

Sociality, Kinship, Houses, Materiality, exchange, socio-economic change, mutual recognition, aspirations, human-environmental relations, methodology, religion

Construction Pioneers. Building Innovation in Upland Northern Laos 

How does newness enter the world? This question entices us to observe the creative ways in which new phenomena, things and ideas are incorporated by agents into existing sociocultural frameworks. One area in which changes are particularly visible is the built environment. In Laos, uplanders, many of whom belong to ethnic minorities, are currently experimenting with cement as a new building material. In recent years, the built landscape in northwestern Laos has been changing drastically. What is of particular interest to this proposed project is the apparently simple question of how local house builders handle this new building material and transform the design and shape of houses.

This project aims to make a novel contribution to the anthropology of houses by analysing the transformation of vernacular architecture by giving emphasis to the reasonings, incentives and imaginations of local lay house builders. The study context, a remote upland area where concrete houses did not exist previously, allows us to tackle the above question particularly well. Furthermore, it focuses on innovation in vernacular architecture, in conjunction with an emphasis on creative agency in ostensibly unlikely places. Looking beyond Southeast Asia, this project embarks from the premise that by studying the creative processes of incorporating new building materials when creating changing house forms and designs, new light can be shed on the overall practices of a community in accommodating newness.

Support: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
Project Management: Rosalie Stolz
PhD research staff: Molly McGrath
International Cooperation Partners (in alphabetical order): Eli Elinoff (Victoria University, New Zealand) and Pierre Petit (Université libre de Bruxelles)
Duration: 2023-2026

Further Grants

2022 Project grant for the research project Construction Pioneers. Building innovation in the uplands of northern Laos (Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft)

2020/2021 Grant for the international workshop The Modern House (Fritz Thyssen Stiftung)

2019- 2022 Postdoctoral research stipend (Fritz Thyssen Stiftung)

2019 Grant for a conference travel (Wenner-Gren Foundation and SIEF Funds)

2018 Grant for copy-editing (Global South Studies Center, UoC)

2018 Grant for a conference travel (German Academic Exchange Service)

2017 Grants for the conference Feldforschung und Familie (Finanzfonds der Universität zu Köln (UzK) zur Umsetzung des Gleichstellungsauftrags, Global South Studies Center and Department for Social and Cultural Anthropology, UoC)

2017 Grant for copy-editing (a.r.t.e.s. international for all)

2015 Travel grant (a.r.t.e.s. international for all)

2014 Travel grant (a.r.t.e.s. international for all)

2013 Travel grant (a.r.t.e.s. international for all)

2013-2017 PhD stipend (a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities Cologne)

Fachzeitschriftenartikel (peer-review)

2023. The end of bamboo houses in northern Laos. American Anthropologist 125(3): 611-622. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13877.

2023. The (after)lives of Khmu houses in northern Laos. Gradhiva: Revue d’anthropologie de d’historie des arts 35 : 48-65. DOI: 10.4000/gradhiva.6838.

2021. Fatherless Children and Listening Spirits: Ritual Technologies of Measuring Kinship and the Rhetorics of Closure Among the Khmu of Northern Laos. Social Analysis 65(4): 151-169. DOI:10.3167/sa.2021.650408

2021. Listening through houses in northern Laos. ANUAC: Rivista Della Società Italiana Di Antropologia Culturale 10 (2): 155-176. DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-4560

2021. (together with Oliver Tappe) Upland Pioneers – An Introduction. Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale 29(3): 635-650. DOI: 10.1111/1469-8676.13089

2021. ‘Before others’: Construction pioneers in the uplands of northwestern Laos. Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale 29(3): 718-732. DOI: 10.1111/1469-8676.13091

2021. ‘The disease will come!’ Contingency, Irony and Challenging Closures in Ethnographic Writing. Ethnoscripts 23(1). https://journals.sub.uni-hamburg.de/ethnoscripts/article/view/1667

2020. (together with Pierre Petit) Emerging Public Spaces in Rural Laos. Civilisations. Revue internationale d’anthropologie et de sciences humaines 69: 171-193.

2020. By Means of Squirrels and Eggs. Kinship and mutual recognition among the Khmu Yuan of Northern Laos. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 10 (2): 548–560. DOI: 10.1086/709506

2019. Making aspirations concrete? ‘Good houses’ and mockery in upland Laos. Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology. DOI: 10.1080/00141844.2019.1696864

2018. 'Spirits Follow the Words.' Stories as Spirit Traces among the Khmu of Northern Laos. Social Analysis 62 (3): 109-127. DOI: 10.3167/sa.2018.620306

Monograph and Thesis

2021. Living Kinship, Fearing Spirits. Sociality among the Khmu of Northern Laos. Copenhagen: NIAS Press.

2017. Fear the Spirits, Love Each Other. Kinship and Sociality Among the Khmu Yuan of Northern Laos. Dissertation, University of Cologne.

2011. Die Klimaethnologie. Kernfragen eines Forschungsbereiches. Unpublished Thesis, University of Cologne.

Edited Volumes

2024. Houses Transformed. Anthropological Perspectives on Changing Practices of Dwelling and Building. New York: Berghahn. Edited together with Jonathan Alderman.

2022. Ethnographic Encounters. Köln: Köppe. Edited together with Michaela Haug.

2021. Upland Pioneers: Aspiration, Future-Making and Emerging Elites in Upland Southeast Asia. Special section in Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale; edited together with Oliver Tappe.

2020. Being a Parent in the Field. Implications and Challenges of Accompanied Fieldwork. Bielefeld: Transcript. Edited together with Fabienne Braukmann, Michaela Haug and Katja Metzmacher.

Book chapters

In press. Concrete Aspirations, Impermeable Houses? In The Social Properties of Concrete edited by Eli Elinoff and Kali Rubaii, Santa Barbara: Punctum Books.

2024. Ein Khmu Pionier. Damrong Tayanins „Being Kammu“. In Inspirationen: Über die Entstehung ethnologischen Denkens edited by Lisa Burger, Tim Burger and David Sumerauer, 83-89. Wuppertal: Edition Trickster im Peter Hammer Verlag.

2024. Introduction: Transforming Houses. In Houses Transformed. Anthropological Perspectives on Changing Practices of Dwelling and Building edited by Rosalie Stolz and Jonathan Alderman. New York: Berghahn.

2023. Verbindende Pfade, trennende Pfade: Zur sozialen Landschaft der Scham in Nordlaos. In Anthropologie der Emotionen. Affektive Dynamiken in Kultur und Gesellschaft edited by Thomas Stodulka, Anita von Poser, Gabriel Scheidecker and Jonas Bens, 211-220. Berlin: Reimer.

2022. Not a Forest. In Ethnographic Encounters herausgegeben von Michaela Haug und Rosalie Stolz, Köln: Köppe.

2022. (together with Michaela Haug) Vorwort. In Ethnographic Encounters herausgegeben von Michaela Haug und Rosalie Stolz. Köln: Köppe.

2020a. (together with Katja Metzmacher, Michaela Haug und Fabienne Braukmann). Introduction: On Being a Parent in the Field. Theoretical and Methodological Implications of Accompanied Fieldwork with the Family. In Being a Parent in the Field. Implications and Challenges of Accompanied Fieldwork edited by Fabienne Braukmann, Michaela Haug, Katja Metzmacher und Rosalie Stolz, Bielefeld: Transcript. Pp. 7-34.

2020b. Falling in and out of sync. Relative immersive processes and immersive processes with relatives in a Khmu village. In Being a Parent in the Field. Implications and Challenges of Accompanied Fieldwork edited by Fabienne Braukmann, Michaela Haug, Katja Metzmacher and Rosalie Stolz, Bielefeld: Transcript. Pp. 143-161.

2015.  A Few Impressions of Doing Fieldwork on Kinship and Sociality Among the Khmu Yuan in Northern Laos. In a.r.t.e.s. Jahrbuch 2014/2015, pp. 106-113.