Barbara Wimmer-Bulin, M.A.

Visiting Doctoral Fellow

Contact

Universität Regensburg
Department for Interdisciplinary Multi-Scalar Area Studies | DIMAS
Bajuwarenstr. 4
93053 Regensburg
Germany

+49 (0)1734562498 barbara.wimmer-bulin@ur.de

Doctoral project

Doing Landscapes while exploring Resources.

Ethnographic Fieldwork on the Visual Governance of a Natural Park in Portugal (working title)

A site in proximity to the villages of Zambujeira do Mar and São Teotónio, situated within the natural park "Parque Natural do Sudoeste Alentejano e Costa Vicentina", offers a concrete illustration of the changes and paradoxes caused by the rapid growth of agriculture and tourism. The development of the industrial agriculture in the natural park, along the irrigation system constructed by former dictator Salazar, has resulted in the influx of tens of thousands of workers from over 25 different countries. The paradoxes and tensions are manifest in the multidirectional mobilities of seasonal workers, labor migrants, incoming tourists, and locals who are leaving in search of prosperity in Europe. Since approximately 2015, the presence of global entrepreneurs has had a significant impact on the socio-cultural dimensions of the region, leading to the emergence of a transformed all-day-life-culture within the villages. This transformation has also had a notable effect on the non-human sphere, encompassing the landscape and its ecosystem. Furthermore, this has resulted in a shift in human behavior towards the landscape itself, encompassing local inhabitants, politicians and economists.

“Landscape, (…) is not just an idealized cultural image. It is also an arena for labor, social practice as speech and text, in which every externalization of an object in practice (…) is an objectification of human thoughts and feelings - a political landscape.” (Olwig 2011 p. 36).

In an environment, where nature is utilized as a resource in many ways and reproduced in the form of images for human consumption, political discourse, and economic exploration, I argue in my case study: the use of landscape images became politicized in order to negotiate resources, including the landscape as a cultural construction, the water supply, and the land by itself.

Curriculum Vitae

Barbara Wimmer-Bulin studied sociology, social and cultural anthropology at the University of Tübingen (2002-2009). Her Master's thesis focused on the concept of  transnationalism in migration studies. She has worked as an independent researcher, combining the arts and the humanities, conducting artistic research and developing projects on specific topics such as the concept of home, the relationship between humans and nature, and her current research project. She has worked as a cultural manager and developed exhibitions in public spaces. Her work has been shortlisted internationally. From April 2021 to 2023 she was associated with the Media Study Department at the University of Regensburg, where she developed student exhibition projects. Since April 2024 she is a PhD student at the Graduate School of East and Southeast European
Studies. Her research interests include human-nature relations, media and space, rurality and agribusiness, and the entanglement of locality and globality. She is also interested in the correlation between photography and environmental perception, and the use of images within discourses and narratives.

Positions, Assigment and Memberships

Member of: KunstvereinGRAZ (Regensburg), Internationales Festival Fotografischer Bilder (Regensburg), Kunst und Gewerbeverein (Regensburg). Freelance worker at the Museum für Archäologie der Stadt Kelheim, independent artist and writer.