Annina Aeberli
Annina Aeberli is a researcher and environmental activist. She holds a bachelor degree in Geography with a minor in Social Anthropology from the University of Zurich and a master degree in Development Studies from the Graduate Institute Geneva (IHEID). She also completed a degree in intercultural mediation. She is currently pursuing her PhD at the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Bern. Since 2011, she has been working as a campaigner at the Bruno Manser Fund (based in Switzerland with regular trips to Malaysia). She has supported grassroots organisations and communities in Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo, in successfully stopping a dam that would have submerged indigenous territories along the Baram River. She has also been involved in the facilitation of the Baram Peace Park, a community initiated park envisioned to merge conservation, sustainable livelihoods and indigenous self-determination in Northern Sarawak. With her PhD research, she has been looking into how the relationship between an indigenous Kenyah community and the non-human world has been changing over the last decades, trying to integrate ontological approaches into political ecology. Whether it is in her role as activist or as researcher, she perceives listening as the most important skill to understand and to initiate processes of transformation.
Annina Aeberli sees research as base for meaningful transformations. Knowledge obligates to act. She is interested in forming a stronger bridge between research/anthropology and action/policy and in helping to reduce the scepticism in academia towards engaged scholarship. The world can only profit from scholars taking on an active role in societies.