Isabel Bredenbröker
SFG 4110
is_brprotect me ?!uni-bremenprotect me ?!.de
Office hours: Wednesdays, appointment via email
Pronouns: they/them
Isabel Bredenbröker is an anthropologist working between academia and art. In Bremen, Isabel teaches film and multimodal anthropological methods while conducting postdoctoral research on swimming practices.
Isabel’s work has focused on material and visual culture, specifically the anthropology of death, plastics and synthetic materials, anthropology of art and museums, queer theory and intersectionality, situatedness and autoethnography, colonialism, cleaning and waste. They have conducted field research in Australia, Ghana and Togo, Greece, South Africa and Germany. Isabel employs multimodal ethnographic methods and engages with different formats in the field of public anthropology: They have produced ethnographic films, worked with field recording and (co-)curated as well as contributed to exhibitions in museum and contemporary art contexts.
Isabel enjoys the collaborative production of works and collective exchange as a different way of engaging with knowledge, also in teaching. Their first monograph ‘Rest in Plastic: Death, time and synthetic materials in a Ghanaian Ewe community’ was published open access in June 2024 with Berghahn. Isabel is a co-convener of the European Network for Queer Anthropology (ENQA), an editor of The February Journal and a co-organizing member of the Network for Decent Labour in Academia (NGAWiss).
Before joining the Institute of Anthropology and Cultural Research in Bremen, Isabel held a DFG Walter Benjamin Postdoctoral Fellowship which was based between the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH) and the Hermann von Helmholtz-Zentrum für Kulturtechnik at Humboldt University Berlin. Isabel also worked as adjunct teacher and in a faculty position at the Department for Social and Cultural Anthropology, Goethe University Frankfurt. Isabel completed their PhD as a member of the DFG research training group ‘Value and Equivalence’ at Goethe University Berlin with honorary research affiliation and co-supervision at University College London. The PhD research investigated the role of synthetic materials in Ghanaian funeral and commemorative practices, focusing on an Ewe community and the impacts of colonial history in the present time. Before choosing anthropology as passion and profession, Isabel completed a BA and MA in comparative literature and creative writing at Freie Universität Berlin. They then re-trained in an MA program focusing on material, visual and digital culture at UCL Anthropology.
Isabel’s research project in Bremen aims to understand fluid intersections of moral assessments and social classification by looking at swimming practices. This multi-sited research will unpack the connections between human bodies, bodies of water, more-than-human entities and the fluid ecologies in which these exist. Preliminary research consists of a collaborative sound piece together with Dr. Kirsty Wissing (Australian National University) that imagines underwater futures and their implications through the sounds of rivers, lakes, oceans and pools in Germany and Australia. The piece will be featured in the exhibition ‘On Water.WaterKnowledge in Berlin’ at Humboldt Labor in Berlin (October 2025).
During their DFG Walter Benjamin fellowship, Isabel probed into the meanings and applications of queer methodology in the context of ethnographic collections. Taking an approach that combined theoretical reflection from anthropology with artistic and curatorial practice, the project formulated elements of a queer methodology that may inform and instruct the analysis and the creation of new relations around artworks and ‘ethnographic’ objects. Queer was here understood as relating to unlikely kinship and non-normative kinds of relations that are of vital importance for anti-colonial practice in the arts and the museum. The project was based on research with students during a one-year Berlin University Alliance student research seminar that produced a pop-up exhibition intervention in the space of the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin as well as a co-authored speculative fiction piece on museums, published in Etnofoor. Furthermore, Isabel collaborated with sound artist Adam Pultz on the sound installation ‘Queer Sonic Fingerprint’ that was shown at Art Laboratory Berlin (October-December 2024). Isabel was also a fellow of the DAAD program TheMuseumsLab in 2024.
Isabel’s PhD research informed the publication of their first monograph ‘Rest in Plastic. Death, Time and Synthetic Materials in a Ghanaian Ewe community’. The book is based on ethnography in the Ghanaian Volta Region and unpacks the relationship between colonial history and contemporary power relations in Ghana by looking at commemorative practices. It investigates the moral and temporal qualities of synthetic materials and dead bodies by unpacking the influence both have on each other and on political relations in the community. The book highlights the importance of attention to moral economies around death and materials. Seeing these moral economies in ethnographic detail and larger contexts is crucial for understanding local concepts of environments, pollution and cleanliness.
Monographs
Bredenbröker, Isabel. Rest in Plastic: Death, time and synthetic materials in a Ghanaian Ewe community, Oxford, New York: Berghahn, 2024. Open Access
Edited volumes
Isabel Bredenbröker, Christina Hanzen, Felix Kotzur (Eds.). Cleaning and value: Interdisciplinary investigations. Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2020. Open Access
Edited special issues
(2025, forthcoming) The February Journal: ‘Hope’ to Solve Some ‘Problems’ Here? Investigations into the Agentive Potential of Ambiguous Terms. Open Access
Journal articles, peer reviewed, single-authored
- Bredenbröker, Isabel. “'Plastic stays beautiful': Attributing temporal and moral qualities in Ghanaian Ewe funerary contexts”, Journal of Material Culture, SAGE, 2024. Open Access
- Bredenbröker, Isabel. “Queering Alfred Gell’s Art Nexus - Making non-normative relations in the museum context”, Ikonotheka, Special Issue: Queer Heritage - Central Europe and Warsaw: Warsaw UP, 2024. Open Access
- Bredenbröker, Isabel. “On Death, Time, and Moving Images” Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 44, 3-4 (2020): 59–62. Open Access
Journal articles, peer reviewed and co-authored
- Bredenbröker, Isabel, Dilara Hadroviç, Frederike Nolte, Sarah Wulbrecht, Sophie Breßler, Josefine Ketelsen, Polina Shablovskaia, Xu Ding, Maria Laurids Lazzarotti, and Meyçem Ceren Ulu. “The Sinking: Speculative Futures Collective.” Etnofoor 36, no. 1 (2024): 53–74. www.jstor.org/stable/27314428.
- Bredenbröker, Isabel, A. Stiegler, and LB. Schürmann. “This House Is Not a Home: Producing Encounter-Based Collective Formats in the Time of COVID-19.” The Garage Journal (2021): Выпуск 2 2021. Open Access
- Bredenbröker, Isabel, and Phila Bergmann „Now I Am Dead”. Journal of Anthropological Film No. 4, 2020. Open Access
Book chapters, peer reviewed
- Bredenbröker, Isabel. Advertising the ancestors: Ghanaian funeral banners as image objects. Death's Social Meaning and Materiality Beyond the Human, edited by Natashe Lemos Dekker, Phil Olson, and Jesse Bristol University Press, 2024.
- Bredenbröker, Isabel. “The Last Bath: Cleaning Practices and the Production of Good Death in an Ewe Community” In Cleaning and value: Interdisciplinary investigations. Edited by Isabel Bredenbröker, Christina Hanzen and Felix Kotzur, 69–88. Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2020. Open Access
Book chapters, peer reviewed and co-authored
- Isabel Bredenbröker and Tajinder Kaur. Giving, taking and receiving care: Fieldwork and dis_ability. Inclusive Ethnography: Making Fieldwork Safer, Healthier & More Ethical. Edited by Branwen Spector and Caitlin Procter. SAGE, 2024.
- Bredenbröker, Isabel, Adam Drazin, Robert Knowles, and Anaïs “Collaboratively Cleaning, Archiving and Curating the Heritage of the Future.” In Design Anthropological Futures: Exploring emergence, intervention and formation. Edited by Rachel C. Smith. London, New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.
- Bredenbröker, Isabel, Felix Kotzur, and Christina Hanzen. “We Have Never Been Clean. Towards an Interdisciplinary Discourse About Cleaning and Value.” In Cleaning and value: Interdisciplinary investigations. Edited by Isabel Bredenbröker, Christina Hanzen and Felix Kotzur, 23–38. Leiden: Sidestone Press.
Book reviews
- Von Oswald M (2022) Working Through Colonial Collections: An Ethnography of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin. Leuven: Leuven University Press. I-SBN 978-94-6270-310-0 In The February Journal, (1) 2024. Open Access
Non-peer reviewed texts
- Bredenbröker, Isabel, Adam Drazin, Robert Knowles, and Anaïs Bloch. “Cleaning up after Gropius: An Ethnography of Dirt.” In Auf Reserve: Haushalten!: Historische Modelle und aktuelle Positionen aus dem Bauhaus. Edited by Regina Bittner and Elke Erste Auflage. Edition Bauhaus 49. Leipzig: Spector Books, 2016.
- Bredenbröker, Isabel.“‘Das Schlimmste für mich ist, wenn der Hund Junkiescheiße frisst...‘ Über meine Love Hate Beziehung zum Görlitzer Park, Racial Profiling und Ethnographie vor der eigenen Haustür“. In: <Doku.Argu.Experi.Pig>, Eds. Clara Bausch and Sara Lehn. Catalogue accompanying the exhibition <Doku.Argu.Experi.Pig>, Berlin: Published by the editors, 2021.
- Bredenbröker, Isabel. „Tote leben länger oder über die Forschung zum Umgang mit Tod in einer südghanaischen Kleinstadt“. In Charlotte Trümpler, Hans Peter Hahn et. al. Faszination der Dinge. Werte weltweit in Archäologie und Ethnologie. Peteresburg Kreis Fulda: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2018.
- Bredenbröker, Isabel. „Individuelle Mythologie: Objekt, Bild und Schrift in Werken von Tracey Emin“. MA dissertation. OA online publication via Free University Berlin repository:
fu-berlin.de/docs/receive/FUDOCS_document_000000019205, 2013.
Summer Term 2025
Film and multimodal ethnography (Universität Bremen)
Winter Term 2023/24
- Speculative futures wanted: Investigating queer temporalities at the Berlin Ethnological Museum (X-Student Research Group, Berlin University Alliance)
- Workshop, Department of Ethnomusicology, Würzburg University: Narrating an Ethnomusicology Archive
Summer Term 2023
- Close-reading theory (M.A.) (Goethe University Frankfurt)
- Non-normative relations wanted: Testing queer methods at the Berlin Ethnological Museum (X-Student Research Group, Berlin University Alliance)
Winter Term 2022/23
- Laboratory: Reflexion and analysis of research data (M.A.) (Goethe University Frankfurt)
Summer Term 2022
- Research, writing and presentation skills in anthropology (B.A.) (Goethe University Frankfurt)
- Erasmus Blended Intensive Program international summer school (co-leadership): Field recording on Lesbos – Affective methods between art and anthropology (in English, collaboration with Die Angewandte, Vienna; University of the Aegean; Athens School of Fine Arts, Goethe Universität Frankfurt and Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg)
Winter Term 2021/22
- Research, writing and presentation skills in anthropology (B.A.) (Goethe University Frankfurt)
Summer Term 2021
- Introduction to the Ethnography of Africa (B.A.)
- Fieldwork in theory and practice (B.A.) (Goethe University Frankfurt)
- Introduction to Material Culture Studies (B.A.) (Goethe University Frankfurt)
Winter Term 2020/21
- Introduction to Material Culture Studies (B.A.) (Goethe University Frankfurt)
- Materiality and Representation of African Cultures (B.A.) (Goethe University Frankfurt)