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Modern Languages and LinguisticsPart of Humanities
Phone:
(023) 8059 2293
Email:
M.Demossier@soton.ac.uk

Professor Marion Demossier PhD in Social Anthropology and Comparative Sociology (Paris, EHESS)

Professor

Professor Marion Demossier's photo

Professor Marion Demossier is a Professor of French and European Studies at the University of Southampton.

Marion Demossier is Professor of French and European Studies in Modern Languages and Linguistics at the University of Southampton. She was Head of department from 2015-2018. She has previously taught French and European politics and society since 1994 at the University of Bath. She holds a Ph.D in Social Anthropology from the EHESS (École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) in Paris. She has published more than twenty scholarly articles in leading academic journals in Britain, France and the United-States, including the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Cultural Analysis, the Anthropological Journal of European Cultures and Modern and Contemporary France. She has also written widely for a student audience, contributing chapters to prestigious series such as A companion to the Anthropology of Europe or Culinary Taste. She has been involved as expert with the wine industry in France and New Zealand over a period of twenty years. She is regularly invited to lecture at international conferences and has appeared on both television and national radio in the UK and France to discuss issues related to her work. She is currently on the ESRC Peer Review Panel member ‘Anthropology of Europe’ since 2010- reappointed until 2019 and sits on the UNESCO Climats de Bourgogne scientific Committee member: http://www.climats-bourgogne.com/ and is a member of the UNESCO network Chair Culture of Wine, Dijon since 2006.

Prizes Awarded

Nomination USU for ‘Best Feedback’ to students 2013-2014
Prize John Willis Award of ‘Best research and Best support to students’ by the University of Bath (1999).
Lucien Perriaux Award, Histoire regionale (1999)

Research interests

My research lies with the study of ‘culture in context’ through ethnography as the primary research method to understand better how global forces impact on specific groups and 'communities'. It aims to provide an understanding of the articulation of global concerns at local level by contributing to the debate about 'politics in places' and ‘place-making’ projects. Using multi-sited and long-term ethnography, my argument is that the ethnographic gaze offers a more nuanced and complex understanding of place, product, locality and people. My long-term project is devoted to Burgundy and the use concept of terroir as well as the ways in which regions have used heritage and culture as a tool for economic development. I have just completed a book on Burgundy and ‘terroir’ which seeks to understand the long term effects that globalisation has on people, but more specifically, to understand how communities change and shape their worlds.  I am currently developing a project on Wine World Stories which aims to create a multidisciplinary debate around wine production and consumption in an era of climate change. WWS will provide an online global forum where different voices can come together in order to discuss current issues connected to today’s viticulture and winemaking. 

More recently, as part of my interest in French Politics and Republicanism,  I am keen to start a new  research on French republicanism from an ethnographic perspective through a multi-sited approach. The anthropology of politics –French and European is my second area of research and I have published extensively on the topic of belonging.

Affiliate research groups

Biography and Education, Ethnography Group

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BOOKS

Burgundy: A Global Anthropology of Place and Taste (2018, Berghahn), 330pp.

Wine Drinking in France, An Anthropology of Wine Culture and Consumption in France (University of Wales Press, 2010), 224 pp.

Hommes et Vins, une anthropologie du vignoble bourguignon (Editions universitaires de Dijon, 1999), 450 pp.        

 

Edited books

Handbook of French Politics, Society and Culture, edited by M. Demossier, D. Lee, A. Mondon, N. Parish (Routledge, forthcoming 2018)

The European Puzzle. Cultures and Identities in Europe, the political structuring of cultural identities (Berghahn, 2007), 224 pp.

Recollections of France: Memories, Identities and Heritage in Contemporary France S. Blowen, M. Demossier and J. Picard (eds.), (Berghahn, 2000), 272 pp.

 

SELECTED REFEREED ARTICLES

'Beyond Terroir: Territorial Construction, Hegemonic Discourses and French wine culture', Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (2011).

 ‘Anthropologists and the Challenge of Modernity: Global concerns, Local responses in EU agriculture', Anthropological Journal of European Cultures, nº 20 (2011).

‘Vin’, Dictionnaire d’histoire culturelle de la France contemporaine, nº. 4 (2011), pp. 803-28.

‘Response to Philip Whalen’s article on terroir’, Cultural Analysis, University of Berkeley.  Invited Guest, volume 6, (2007). http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~caforum/

‘Introduction, Special issue of Aofood : Wine and Globalization’ Aofood, 3, (December 2004)

‘Wine’ Encyclopedia of the French Atlantic, edited by Bill Marshall, Santa Barbara, ABC, Clio, (2005) pp.1219-1224.

‘Goût du Vin et goûts des Vins chez les britanniques au XXième siècle’  

Revue des Œnologues, nº111, (April 2004), pp.49-51.

 

REFEREED CHAPTERS IN BOOKS

‘Reflexive Imbrications’ The Globalization of Wine: The Trans-Nationalization and Localization of Production, Leisure and Pleasure edited by David Inglis and Anna-Mari Almila, University of the Arts London (forthcoming 2016).

‘The Politics of Heritage in the Land of Food and Wine’ A Companion to Heritage Studies, edited by William Logan, Máiread Nic Craith, Ullrich Kockel.

(Wiley-Blackwell Companions to Anthropology Series, 2015).

‘Sarkozy and Roma: performing securitization’ The Anthropology of Security: Perspectives            from the Frontline of Policing Counter-terrorism and Border Control edited by Mark Maguire, Catarina Frois and Nils Zurawski. (London, Pluto Press, 2014).

‘Following Grands Crus: Global Markets, Transnational Histories and Wine?’Wine and                  Culture: From the vineyard to the glass edited by Rachel Black and Robert C. Ulin (Berg, 2013).

‘The Europeanization of Terroir: A Political Sociology of Europeans?’ Narratives of Transnational Belonging in Europe? A look at Culture, edited by Rebecca Friedman and Markus Thiel, (2012) Ashgate.

‘Une anthropologie de la construction des climats de Bourgogne’, Les climats du vignoble de Bourgogne comme patrimoine mondial de l’humanité, Edited by Jean-Pierre Garcia, Editions Universitaires de Dijon (2011).

‘European Politics, Policies and Institutions’A companion to the Anthropology of Europe, U.  Kockel, M-N Craith and J. Frykman (eds), Blackwell Publishing (2011).

 

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

Do I belong: Reflections from Europe. Kreisky Forum, Pluto Press (2016).

The Anthropology of Food Heritage, Universal Exhibition, Milan 2015, University of Milan Boccaccio, Fondazione Feltrinelli, commissioned report.

Les climats de Bourgogne, Pays de Bourgogne, 231 http://www.athenaeum.com/article/2000022010450

Invited Guest for the Danish Journal Stof, Drinking Culture in the UK, translated into       Danish and published in January 2007.

Invited Guest for the forum online ‘Notre Europe’, think tank of Jacques Delors on the Future of wine

Moi, je suis vigneron, in Vignes et Vins, ORCCA, MECSTI, Reims: 14-17. Exhibition              (catalogue for an exhibition based upon my research).

Research advisor for the Film ‘La Saint Vincent Tournante’ by Georges Nivoix, 1994.

Articles

Books

Book Chapters

Conferences

My current undergraduate teaching focuses on aspects of twenty-first century French Politics and contemporary society and culture as well as EU Politics; I am also contributing to a First year Humanities module on ‘Introduction to ethnographic studies: Food and Culture’ as well as a postgraduate module ‘Understanding Transnational studies’.

I have always believed in the virtues of ethnography as a methodological tool, the questions it enables a researcher to ask and the possibilities for qualitative and critical understanding it offers. I would therefore be delighted to work with candidates interested in using ethnography as a research method, especially in relation (but not limited) to research related to contemporary France, Europe, the EU or the UK.

Working as a social anthropologist within the disciplinary field of Modern Languages and Linguistics and the particularly rich interdisciplinary environment at Southampton, I am very happy to advise and supervise postgraduate students working in a range of areas and regional contexts: wine and terroir studies, food studies, performative cultures, drinking cultures, migration, Republicanism in France, the Roma, European identity, education/schooling and multiculturalism.

I have also launched in 2016 with our MLL postgraduate students a research group entitled ‘Debating ethnography’ https://www.facebook.com/groups/DebatingEthnography.soton/

Professor Marion Demossier
Student Office, Building 65, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Southampton, Avenue Campus, Southampton. SO17 1BF United Kingdom

Room Number: 65/3023

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