Prof. Dr. Gerhild Perl

Personal information

I have been Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology (TT) at LMU Munich since October 2025. Before that, I was Assistant Professor at the University of Trier and a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the University of Bern, where I completed my Ph.D. in 2019. I have held visiting fellowships in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge and at the Institute Sociétés en mutation en Méditerranée at Aix-Marseille University. I completed my studies at the universities of Vienna and Lisbon.
My research focuses on migration and border regimes, detention and deportation, death and disappearance, and the politics of grief, as well as inheritance and transgenerational transfers, and engages with questions of power, subjectivation, and responsibility. More broadly, I am interested in the affective, temporal, and political dimensions of social life in an unequal and interconnected world. I have worked extensively on death and survival during migration across the Spanish–Moroccan sea, as well as on questions of ir/responsibility and the processes of inclusion and exclusion in Germany.

Research Projects

2024–2025 Co-director and PI des Leibniz-ScienceCampus RECOMENT – Resiliencies: Comparing and Integrating Methodologies, Methods, Narratives, and Theories.
2022–2023. Integration und Teilhabe: Perspektiven von Geflüchteten, ehrenamtlich Engagierten und hauptamtlich Tätigen in Trier und Umgebung [funded by the Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth]
2021. Confronting Hostile Terrains: Border Regimes and their Global Impact. with Darcy Alexandra [funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, Burgergemeinde Bern, Fund for the promotion of young researchers, Univ. of Bern, Diversity Initiative Grant, Faculty of Humanities, Univ. of Bern] https://www.kornhausforum.ch/event/confronting-hostile-terrains
2021. Transnational inheritance: Family succession and social reproduction between France and Morocco [funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation]
2017–2018. The shipwreck of Rota. Moralities of violent death in the Spanish-Moroccan borderlands. [funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation]

Awards and Nominations

• 2024 Nominated by the University Management of Trier University for the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz-Preis 2025.

• 2022 Student nomination for the Teaching Award of the University of Trier for the MA course: “Identity Politics and the ‘Social Question’” (Identitätspolitik und soziale Frage).
• 2020 IMISCOE-Maria Ioannis Baganha Dissertation Award.
• 2019 Dissertation prize of the German Anthropological Association (GAA).
• 2014 Shortlisted at the TRACK 5 competition for short radio plays Oe1 (Austrian Radio) with the play: Im Arbeitsmarktservice zum Beispiel.

Academic career

• Since 10/2025 Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at LMU Munich
• 10/2021 – 09/2025 Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Trier
• 7/2021 – 9/2021 Visiting researcher at the Institut Sociétés en Mutation en Méditerranée (SoMuM), Aix-Marseille University
• 8/2018 – 9/2021 Assistant at the Institute for Social Anthropology, University of Bern
• 2/2019 Doctorate at the Faculty of Philosophy and History, University of Bern
• 10/2017 – 3/2018 Visiting PhD candidate at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge
• 2/2014–9/2017. PhD candidate in the project: Intimate Uncertainties. Precarious life and moral economy across European borders (PI: Sabine Strasser). [funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation]
• 6/2012 Master’s degree