Dr. Henry Kammler

As an ethnologist / anthropologist with a linguistic bent, I have been teaching at LMU since 2010 (previously at Goethe University Frankfurt), focusing in part on the indigenous languages of the Americas. My courses are based on several years of fieldwork in Nahuatl-speaking communities in Guerrero, Mexico; over two decades of collaborative research on Vancouver Island (BC, Canada; Southern Wakashan languages: Nuu-chah-nulth, Ditidaht); as well as Quechua studies in the vast stretch from Cusco, Peru, to Cochabamba, Bolivia. Language acquisition “in the field” and ethnographic project work are closely intertwined and follow parallel methodological steps. For this reason, my courses are tailored to be spoken-word-oriented, serving as a kind of “dry run” in learning to engage with language and culture through the experience of authentic speech events, beyond prescriptive-normative school grammar.

Other interests of mine include the establishment and structuring of regional autonomies, human-environment relationships, and the communalization of both geographical and human-made spaces; the cohesion and disintegration of diasporic communities; religious dynamics and conflicts; as well as the potential and development of digital, counter-hegemonic language and cultural archives. I am also concerned with the practical-political relevance of ethnographically informed anthropology, which, as a discipline focused on people in their everyday practices, affords us privileged insights into multifaceted, interlocking lifeworlds; for this reason, its practice should unfold politically both on the ground and here at home, extending beyond the confines of project parameters and the study desk.