Ethnology: the beauty and horror of the world

The women do not know how long they have to remain in this place. Originally from Cameroon, they made their way to Spain by boat. Now they are being held in a migrants’ detention center. Police guards enter the dining hall and call out three names. “You will be released within a couple of hours,” one of them says. “Go, get your stuff.”

The three women are overjoyed. A fourth woman, also from Cameroon and who arrived on the same boat, joins the group: “What about me? Am I free too?” she asks the guards. When they answer in the negative, the woman collapses in despair, loses consciousness, and lies motionless on the floor. Her fellow detainees form a protective ring around her.

“We others – the guards, the volunteers, the anthropologist – stare at them wide-eyed. Exposed and yet powerful, Dorothy’s body made us painfully aware of what ‘our’ laws do and how ‘our’ practices harm. No one was innocent. Not in this moment.” This is how anthropologist Gerhild Perl describes the scene she witnessed in a Spanish city in an article in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

The story of a capsized boat

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Migration and how societies deal with this issue is one of the main research interests of Gerhild Perl. After studying Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Vienna, Perl completed her doctorate with a dissertation about a boat sinking off the Spanish coast (Traces of Death. Exploring Affective Responsiveness Across the Spanish-Moroccan Sea). “I was deeply moved by the constant reports of people dying in the Mediterranean Sea. We’re all familiar with the images of refugees crammed into boats. And at the same time, we keep hearing the news of how many people have died on these journeys across the Mediterranean. For me, the following questions were important to ask: Who are these people, and who are their families? And what happens afterward? It was about telling the story of one of these boats.”

Her doctoral project also prompted the anthropologist to dig deeper into the disappearance of people. This includes so-called enforced disappearances under authoritarian regimes.

Perl’s doctorate at the University of Bern was part of the broader project “Intimate Uncertainties. Precarious life and moral economy across European borders”. After obtaining her PhD she remained at the University of Bern, working as an assistant at the Institute of Social Anthropology from 2019 to 2021. She had already had a residency at the renowned Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge as a visiting PhD student. After her doctorate, she had another residency at the “Sociétés en Mutation en Méditerranée” institute at Aix-Marseille University. From 2021 to 2025, she was Junior Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Trier University before taking up her current appointment at LMU in October 2025.

“LMU is an excellent research location with a large and vibrant anthropology institute. Several scholars are doing research on migration in various regions of the world, but also on issues I know less about. Ecology, environmental anthropology, and digital anthropology are all well represented here, for example. And these topics have numerous intersections with other subjects,” says Gerhild Perl, who appreciates the potential synergies at LMU as a university that covers the full range of academic disciplines: “You can strike up conversations here with people who address these questions from different disciplinary perspectives. I find this very inspiring.”

Germany – soon to be a country of emigration?

The anthropologist plans to explore migration to, in, and from Germany in a new project. “The project proceeds from the paradox that there are politics of closing – with very strong controls at the EU’s external borders and an intensification of deportations – and at the same time an opening – as all European countries are affected by demographic change and urgently require skilled workers.”

Gerhild Perl also points to statistics showing that many immigrants are returning to their home countries or move on to new destinations. In the new project, she wants to investigate what political, legal, and social conditions are necessary to encourage them to stay in Germany. Otherwise, she explains, Germany could become a country of emigration.

Perl notes that the current restrictive migration policy makes no sense for many German employers since people who are urgently needed in the job market are deported. “Deportations do something to people. And not just those directly impacted. They always do something to a society as well.”

The taboo of inheritance

Another project of Gerhild Perl concerns her second main research interest: the anthropology of death. Specifically, it looks at the subject of inheritance, about which there has been little transnational research. “Inheritance reproduces social status, wealth and poverty alike. I’d like to shift the emphasis to the receiving of inheritances. There are initiatives that scrutinize where family wealth comes from. What history – or even what historical guilt – is behind such an inheritance? And how can people deal responsibly with it?”

Gerhild Perl observes that inheritances are a social taboo. “In conversations today, people can ask all kinds of intimate questions that were out of bounds 50 years ago, even ones relating to sexuality for instance. But the question ‘How much did you inherit?’ is socially taboo. I find that interesting.”

This will also be the subject of her upcoming field research sabbatical, which will take her to Spain and Morocco. Spain is particularly interesting as a country of immigration and emigration, especially the Canary Islands. In Morocco, meanwhile, the existence of legal pluralism and the Islamic influence on family law are particularly salient aspects.

Bringing insights to society and politics

Now almost at the end of her second teaching semester at LMU, the anthropologist draws a very positive conclusion: “I’m impressed by the students at LMU and their commitment to learning. It’s a great pleasure to teach here.” She already has many ideas for what to do after her research semester. She has always sought to bring her research findings to a broader public and to involve her students in the process. For example, she has collaborated with artists on an exhibition about the effects of border controls and border regimes. “It’s important to me that our findings are also heard by different publics and politics,” says Perl.

Studying anthropology was a route for Gerhild Perl out of the narrowness of the Austrian village in which she grew up into the wider world. “I was drawn to it from a very early age,” she recalls. She was inspired by curiosity about the unknown and about other countries and other forms of social coexistence.

Her academic career has enabled her to satisfy this curiosity. She travels to many countries around the world, although her main focus is on Spain, but also Morocco, and increasingly Germany. “On field research trips you see and experience things you could never have imagined,” she relates. “The world and the lives of people are so surprising .” She has retained her sense of wonder at what she encounters. This is the case even though her research topic makes her witness to “scenes that are truly upsetting, especially when working with vulnerable people. But this is also our world, a world of inequality, of exclusion, of violence.”