Katharyne Mitchell

During her time at CASBS, Katharyne Mitchell will work on a book exploring the intersections of imperialism, constructions of racial difference, and infrastructures of control at a single site over the course of nine centuries. Focusing on Tempelhof Field in Berlin, her spatial history stretches back to the period of the crusading Knights Templar and extends through Prussian military parades, Nazi rallies, and forced labor camps, to contemporary refugee housing on the field and in the hangars of the old airport. The research examines the ways that material infrastructures and spatial practices can help to consolidate imperial and authoritarian visions, holding memory and myth-making in place, and sedimenting narratives of national greatness through time.

Mitchell was trained as a geographer at UC Berkeley, and is currently a distinguished professor of sociology at UC Santa Cruz. She served as dean of the social sciences at UCSC and as the inaugural Simpson Professor of the Public Humanities at the University of Washington. Her work has explored concepts such as transnationalism, multiculturalism, diaspora, and hybridity, offering a materialist, grounded understanding of often abstracted processes and discourses. More recently, Mitchell's work has looked at transnationalism in the context of spaces of sanctuary and faith-based networking for asylum seekers in Europe.

For more information, please see: https://katharynemitchell.sites.ucsc.edu/