Professor Zuzanna Olszewska

I joined St. John’s College as the Tutorial Fellow in Archaeology and Anthropology in Michaelmas Term 2015. I am the organising tutor for Archaeology and Anthropology, and I provide anthropology tutorials to Archaeology and Anthropology and Human Science students at St. John’s. At the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, I am involved in a wide range of lectures and tutorial teaching for undergraduates and postgraduates, including co-teaching an option course on the Social Anthropology of the Middle East.

My main regional areas of interest are contemporary Iran and Afghanistan. The themes I am most interested in include the anthropology of literature, cultural production and intellectual activity, particularly as these are practised by diasporas. My past research has been on Afghan refugee poets in Iran, while my current research examines the sharing of various cultural products and political debates on social media by the global Afghan diaspora. I am particularly interested in exploring how these affect Afghan national and ethnic identities, and what role social media is playing in  national identity formation, religious practice and gender relations in Afghanistan and its diasporas.