Hugo Valenzuela-Garcia is Associate Professor (PhD 2006; MA’s University of Manchester, 2010) at the Departament of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). Currently Director of EGOLAB (Laboratoire of Personal Networks and Communities) and full member of GRAFO (Research Group in Basic and Fundamental Anthropology) and deputy member of CREIS (Centro de Investigación en Emprendimiento e Innovación Social).
Former Deputy Member of the European Association for Southeast Asian Studies (EuroSEAS, 2007-2010), former board member of Society for Economic Anthroology (SEA, since 2011) and co-funder and convenor of EASA Network of Anthropology of Economy (2012-2018). From summer 2019 Associate Editor of JOE (Journal of Organizational Ethnography, Emerald).
My main field of interest is Economic Anthropology and my late research is on urban poverty and relational exclusion (Check some of my last publications here!). Work, austerity and poverty, enterpreneurship (social, ethnic), peasantry, consumption, fisheries, are actual lines of research and main interests.
My doctoral research was carried out in a small and traditional Malaysian fishermen island of less than 1200 inhabitants (near Lankawi Island, Malaysia). I conducted two years of anthropological fieldwork in a very classical, Malinowskian, style. I had to learn bahasa Melayu from skratch and I was actually adopted by a local Malay family, to whom I always will be deeply grateful. That was probably one of the first and scarce ethnographic fieldwork done in South-East Asia in Spain. This ethnographic work was published in Edwin and Mellen Eds.
Since then my intellectual interests have revolved around Economic Anthropology in a broad sense: peasants, new forms of consumption and work, social entrepreneurs, business anthropology, poverty, informal economy, and ecology; and in areas of international migration: transnationalism, ethnic economies, economic diasporas, etc. . I have done field work in Malaysia, Spain and Mexico. I am currently co-directing a project on the survival strategies of impoverished families in Catalonia, Spain. The economic crisis since 2008 and the emerging socio-economic processes in the EU area are the areas that have caught my attention in recent years.
ACADEMIC CAREER
- From 2019 onwards (And I hope for many, many years!) Associate Professor.
- 2014 to 2019 Interim Associate Professor. Department of Social & Cultural Anthropology. Universitat Autònoma Barcelona. Spain
- 2009-2014 – Reader in Social Anthropology. Department of Social & Cultural Anthropology. Universitat Autònoma Barcelona. Spain
- 2008-2009 – Associate Professor B Category. Invited Professor under the Chair Ángel Palerm. Department of Anthropology. Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (Iztapalapa). México DF
- 2005-2008 – Assistant Professor and Postdoctoral Fellow. Department of Social & Cultural Anthropology. Universitat Autònoma Barcelona. Spain
- 2001–2005 – PhD Fellowship . Becario Formación Personal Investigador. Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia. Department of Social & Cultural Anthropology. Universitat Autònoma Barcelona. Spain
SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEES AND SCIENTIFIC NETWORKS
- 2017 -… Director Egolab-GRAFO
- Desde 2007 – Evaluador Externo Revista Athenea Digital. Revista de Pensamiento e Investigación Social.
- Desde 2016 – Evaluador Externo Revista CIDOB d’Afers Internacionals.
- Desde 2015 – Comité Científico Revista Memorias. Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia.
- Desde 2013 – Consejo Asesor de Quaderns-e. Institut Català Antropologia (ICA). Barcelona.
- Desde 2013 – Miembro de European Social Anthropology Association (EASA).
- Desde 2013 – Miembro de International Union of Anthropology and Ethnology Sciencies (UAES).
- Desde 2012 – Co-fundador y convenor de Network of Anthropology of Economy de EASA.
- Desde 2012 – Revisor Externo Revista Papers (Sociología, UAB)
- 2007-2010 – Deputy Member EuroSEAS Board.
- 2010 – Board member Society for Economic Anthropology (SEA).