Areas of research and interest
Economic and Political Anthropology; Infrastructure and Electricity; Energy Transition; Political Economy; Environmental Justice; Inflation; Value Theory and Shifts.
Regional Interest: Pakistan and Europe
Contact
Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Oettingenstr. 67
80538 Munich
Room:
C 012
Email:
q.rieder@lmu.de
Office hours:
Please contact me via email for office hours
Quirin Rieder works as postdoctoral researcher and lecturer in the team of Gerhild Perl. He completed his PhD at the University of Vienna in 2026. His thesis looked at struggles around uneven access to electricity in Gilgit-Baltistan, Northern Pakistan, a region with long hours of daily blackouts (load-shedding). Through the lens of ‘vital tensions’, the thesis examined conflicts over the production and distribution of electricity. These tensions interlink everyday struggles for more energy with moral economic claims regarding values of fair access and political autonomy, and eventually produce conflicted communities of shared energy use.
Quirin currently works on a new project on inflation as contested value-shifts, which tries to understand how inflation is made, negotiated, and politicised in everyday life.
He is also part of the editorial collective Edition Trickster, a book series at Peter Hammer Verlag, aiming to bring contemporary anthropological contributions to a broader German-speaking audience.
Education
- Since 10/2026: PostDoctoral Researcher, LMU Munich
- 08/2026: PhD Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna
- 12/2025–05/2026: Visiting PhD Student, MPI for Social Anthropology Halle/Saale
- 09/2025–11/2026: Visiting PhD Student, RCC for Environment & Society Munich
- 10/2021–09/2025: PreDoc Lecturer, University of Vienna
- 09/2020–09/2021: MSc Social Anthropology, London School of Economics (LSE)
- 10/2018–03/2021: MA Literature and Cultural Theory, Tübingen University
- 10/2015–09/2018: BA Social and Cultural Anthropology, LMU Munich (Erasmus: Durham University, UK)
Publications
- accepted for publication. “Practicing Inflation by Negotiating Values in Aliabad, Northern Pakistan” Critique of Anthropology.
- 2025. Book Review: „Queer Companions: Religion, Public Intimacy, and Saintly Affects in Pakistan, by Omar Kasmani, 2022“. Sociologus 73:1. DOI:10.3790/soc.2023.1452906
- 2024. „Drinking Tea with the IMF: Sticking to Prices and Protesting Inflation in Aliabad, Northern Pakistan“. Focaal Blog. 10 December 2024. https://www.focaalblog.com/2024/12/10/quirin-rieder-drinking-tea-with-the-imf-sticking-to-prices-and-protesting-inflation-in-aliabad-northern-pakistan
- 2024. Book Review: “Intimate Connections: Love and Marriage in Pakistan’s High Mountains, by Anna-Maria Walter, 2021”. Social Anthropology / Anthropologie Sociale 32:2. pp. 120–122. DOI: 10.3167/saas.2024.320209
- 2023. “Living Along Infrastructural Lines: Following Electricity in Hunza, Pakistan”. In: Martin Porr & Niels Weidtmann (ed.). One World Anthropology and Beyond: A Multidisciplinary Engagement with the Work of Tim Ingold. London: Routledge. pp. 171–184. DOI: 10.4324/9781003162773-18
- 2023. “Power to Which People? Energiegerechtigkeit und ownership-Strukturen in Energiegenossenschaften”. In: Silja Klepp & Jonas Hein (ed.) Umweltgerechtigkeit und sozialökologische Transformation: Konflikte um Nachhaltigkeit im deutschsprachigen Raum. Bielefeld: transcript. pp. 117–143. –– coauthored with Konstantin Veit, Nikolaj Moretti, Luis Peters and Celine Li. [in German | open access]
- 2021. Tim Ingold: Eine kurze Geschichte der Linien. Konstanz: Konstanz University Press. (German translation of Lines: A Brief History) https://www.k-up.de/9783835391284-eine-kurze-geschichte-der-linien.html