Andreas Lipowsky (PhD completed, Humboldt University of Berlin) is Early Career Writing Fellow with MWF Delhi. A cultural theorist and historian by training, Andreas specialises in the history of anthropology, with a current focus on ethnographic fieldwork methodology in the 19th-century British context. His doctoral dissertation, Metaanthropology: Ethnographic Representation and Indigenous Lifeworlds in the Long Twentieth Century, written in German, develops an analytic framework for ethnography informed by the historic “crisis of representation” and more recent debates surrounding the ontological turn in anthropology.
Andreas has previously held positions and fellowships with the Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research (Berlin), Humboldt University Berlin (Department of Cultural Theory and History), Free University Berlin (American Studies), University of Konstanz (Literature, Art and Media Studies), the University of British Columbia (Literatures in English), the University of California, Berkeley (German Studies), and Cornell University (Anthropology).
Areas of Research Interest
- History of Anthropologies
- The Ontological Turn
- Ethnographic Representation
- History of Fieldwork Methods
- Indigeneity
- Cultural Theory, Narratology, Media Theory
Ongoing Research Project
Notes and Queries on Anthropology: The Questionnaire Method and the Making of Ethnographic Fieldwork (1874–1912)
Andreas’s current project examines the development of ethnographic fieldwork methodology in the late 19th century, focusing on the dissemination and implementation of Notes and Queries on Anthropology for the Use of Travellers and Residents in Uncivilized Lands (1874). This pioneering handbook aimed to standardise ethnographic data collection across the British Empire by providing travellers, missionaries, and colonial administrators with a detailed catalogue of questions to guide observation and reporting.
The British Raj is central to this methodological history, as the most comprehensive application of the Notes and Queries was by one Edward Horace Man, who followed the directive of the handbook for his encyclopaedic study of the Aka-Bea on Greater Andaman, leading to the publication of On the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands in 1885. Beginning with the handbook’s conception in London in 1874 and extending to its circulation and use throughout the Empire, the project traces how the “questionnaire method” shaped ethnographic practice and writing in this period and beyond. It argues that this method, inaugurated by Notes and Queries, was as formative for the history of ethnography as the later development of intensive fieldwork techniques, commonly known as “participant observation.”
Selected Publications
- 2025. »›Anthropology is the Theory and Practice of Permanent Decolonization‹ – The Ontological Turn in Anthropology and Epistemic Delinking in the Long Durée«. In: Kuckuck. Notizen zur Alltagskultur 25(1): 46-50
- 2024. »Bronislaw Malinowski. Icon of a body-centric anthropology« In Bronislaw Malinowski and His Legacy in Contemporary Social Sciences and Humanities, hrsg. von Dariusz Brzeziński und Grażyna Kubica-Heller. S. 161-176. London: Routledge
- 2021. »›It’s good because it’s awful.‹ Stilbegriff und Stilistik in Susan Sontags »Notes on ›Camp‹« Zeitschrift für Deutsche Philologie 140 (Sonderheft: Der Stil der Literaturwissenschaft) hrsg. von Eva Geulen und Claude Haas. 249-256. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag
- 2020. »Lebensphilosophie and the Revolution in Anthropology. Uncovering the original ›turn to life‹. in: HAU. Journal for Ethnographic Theory. 10(3): 800-812. Chicago University Press
- 2019. »Die neue ›Erziehung der Sinne‹. Fotografische Bildinszenierungen im Kontext der frühen Freikörperkultur« In Nacktheit – transdisziplinäre anthropologische Perspektiven hrsg. von Allolio-Näcke, L., Oorschot, J. van & Verstegen, U. Münster: Lit Verlag
- 2017. »Zynisch-kynische Gymnastiken. Körperkulturen, Bewusstseinsmodelle und mediale Inszenierung« Augenblick. Konstanzer Hefte zur Medienwissenschaft. 69/70: 75-92. Marburg: Schüren
Forthcoming Publications
- 2026. Metaanthropologie. Ethnografische Repräsentation und Indigene Lebenswelt im langen 20. Jahrhundert. Berlin: De Gruyter
- 2026. Edited with Bernardo Bianchi und Oliver Precht: Die ontologische Wende. Indigene Kosmologien und die Dekolonisierung des Seins. Ein Reader. Berlin: Suhrkamp
- 2026. With Karin Doolan et al. »The Political Novel in School Curricula: A Critical Analysis of Literary School Curricula Across Four European Countries.«In: Journal TBD
- 2026. With Karin Doolan et al. »The Political Novel in Practice. Towards a Cosmopolitan Literary School Curricula in Europe.« (Arbeitstitel). In: Journal TBD
- 2026. With Bernardo Bianchi und Oliver Precht: »Einleitung«. In: Die ontologische Wende. Berlin: Suhrkamp
- 2026. David Graeber: »Radikale Alterität heißt nichts anderes als Realität. Eine Antwort auf Eduardo Viveiros de Castro.« Translated into German by Andreas Lipowsky. In: Die ontologische Wende. Berlin: Suhrkamp
- 2026. Roy Wagner: »Kultur als Kreativität.« (Chapter 2 of The Invention of Culture, 1975).Translated into German by Andreas Lipowsky. In: Die ontologische Wende. Berlin: Suhrkamp
- 2026. »›Notes and Queries‹ on the Andaman Islands. Edward Horace Man’s 1885 Monograph as an Exemplar of Questionnaire-Based Ethnography«. In: Early Ethnographers in the Long Nineteenth Century (Sonderheft). BEROSE – Encyclopédie internationale des histoires de l’anthropologie

